


Coyote Lovely

by t_pock



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: CoWorkers to Friends to Lovers, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Medium Burn, Road Trips, Sharing a Bed, The New Mexican Experience
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-14 22:08:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13599396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t_pock/pseuds/t_pock
Summary: After a mission gone wrong, Hanzo and McCree must lie low in New Mexico for a week. Together.





	1. Red or Green

**Author's Note:**

> I've never played Overwatch in my life, but I'm a New Mexican with a thing for Shitty Older Siblings: this was inevitable. Apologies in advance for mischaracterizations and lore misunderstandings. This is just an excuse to show some hometown pride.

Hanzo keeps his eyes on the dusty road and not on McCree bleeding out in their stolen truck’s passenger seat. The New Mexican sun is unkind even through the sunglasses he found in the door pocket on the driver’s side; he has to squint to keep from crossing out of their faded lane.

 

McCree jerks a red thumb toward the scrub along the side of the road. “Those are piñon trees,” he says, slurring a little. “You can make a salve with the sap.”

 

“Keep pressure on your wound,” Hanzo barks. McCree drops his bloody hand back to his thigh. “How long until we arrive?”

 

“Well, that there was Pojoaque.” McCree tips his hat back at the little brown town shrinking in the rear view mirror. “Soon, memory serving.”

 

The cracked leather on the steering wheel creaks under Hanzo’s grip. He concentrates on keeping their truck from tipping as they round a mountainside; it’s been a long time since he drove a vehicle with real wheels, not since his last drift race in the vintage car his father eventually destroyed. Despite his best efforts the truck shudders through the curve.

 

“Sumbitch.” McCree sucks his teeth. His free hand plucks at his chaps, which are so blood-soaked that the supple leather is turning dark.

 

“If you had been any slower, it would have been a gut shot,” Hanzo points out. “And you would not have lasted this long.”

 

Hanzo’s observations are not often appreciated, but McCree only drops his skull back against his headrest, knocking his hat askew. “I’m a roach,” he disagrees. “What should kill me just don’t.”

 

His drawl is a little less decipherable than before. Hanzo scowls. “I hope for your sake that is true.”

 

They pass a gas station built out of adobe and etched with the petroglyphs that Hanzo has seen everywhere since their arrival in Albuquerque. McCree stares at it in the side view even after they pass into a different shrub-and-gravel ravine.

 

“Could go for a smoke,” he says, very hoarse. He pats his hands clumsily across his chest and smears fingerprints on his flannel.

 

Hanzo’s throat is raw. Their truck’s dash has been gutted by a chain of thefts before their time; they’ve been driving with the windows cracked in lieu of cooling. The sand tossed up by their tires flies right through the vents and into his dry mouth.

 

“Your _wound_ ,” he snaps.

 

McCree puts his hands back in his lap.

 

Their predicament would almost be easier to accept if they had botched their reconnaissance entirely, if they had been run out of the casino where Athena’s scouting algorithm had pinged a potential info trafficking operation. Instead McCree had infiltrated the Starbird Resort without incident and Hanzo had gained its heat-baked roof without resistance, and within the day they had confirmation that the entity Talon was indeed scalping details on former Overwatch agents to the remnants of the Deadlock gang.

 

It took Winston only eight hours into their stakeout to declare the mission objective achieved and to issue the order for a withdrawal. It was simple bad luck that the Deadlock liaison who stepped into the same urinal as McCree, in the middle of dismantling his cover as another gambling rancher, was also one of Reyes’ old turncoats. A small mercy that he was a slower draw.

 

McCree’s head is lolling on his shoulders. Hanzo flicks the nob on the truck’s stripped, skeletal radio and the cabin fills with glitchy desert static. McCree jerks back into consciousness.

 

“Which way?” Hanzo asks, leaning forward to squint at the road sign announcing the next few exits. The looping symbols show more than one route, and are covered in dust besides.

 

“Up,” McCree says unhelpfully. His eyes are closing again.

 

“If you die,” Hanzo warns him loudly, “I will claim your stash of spirits.”

 

“Damn.” McCree struggles to sit up straight, losing his hat in the effort. “Thought we were tight.”

 

Hanzo was unaware that passing each other soap in the communal showers, agreeing to joint supply runs, and wandering into the same cobwebbed, defunct corner of the Watchpoint in Gibraltar to drink meant being _tight_. If Hanzo’s other interactions on base were the standard, however, then he supposes they are.

 

“Stay awake,” he orders.

 

Hanzo takes the exit that most closely follows his memory of the satellite imagery that McCree had shown him exactly once when he mentioned a safehouse in the vicinity of their dropsite. They end up on a road that hugs one wall of a shallow canyon. The slope beneath them is dotted with more cliques of piñon; little pebbles skitter ominously down the slope above them. Hanzo leans against the steering wheel for most of the way.

 

“When I was a brat,” McCree confides after a few minutes, “I used to run away from home every other month. Got as far as Black Mesa, once.” He’s referring to the volcanic plateau he pointed out way back down the road. “Spent the night shivering outta my skin and beating off coyotes with my damn boot.”

 

Hanzo feels like he’s eavesdropping even though he’s being spoken to. In the half-year he has known him, McCree has hardly offered anything more private than his cigarillo preference. For a long time Hanzo assumed McCree was simply keeping his distance from a kin-slayer, until he realized that McCree skipped nearly as many communal meals with the other agents back on base as he did.

 

“You ever ran away from home?” McCree asks.

 

Hanzo has roughed up men for asking less. “Twice,” he huffs, attention on the road.

 

The first time had been shortly after Genji learned to walk and talk. One day his brother had stolen and flushed his prized Pachimaru keychain, so Hanzo had shoved his afternoon snack into his pockets and run out of the Shimada castle gates when his nanny wasn’t looking. He hid for four hours in Hanamura’s little gift shop, eventually going home when he remembered Genji would cry if he went to bed alone.

 

The second time had been during a spring recess at university, after Hanzo had finally obeyed his father’s demands to change his major. Within two hours of getting off the phone with his mother, who always cried when Sojiro made her his proxy, Hanzo had stepped on a flight to Guangzhou and inside of a week established a false identity with his spare Cantonese. He had been fully prepared to spend a few years losing his father’s men on wild goose chases through the city, but it was Genji that Sojiro had sent to the door of his rented suite, shivering on a bad high off of Shimada product. Hanzo had taken his brother to a bribable hospital and then deleted his drafted request for academic withdrawal that night. Every break after that, his father had him escorted back home.

 

Hanzo is badly startled by the sight of a checkpoint around the last bend of the canyon. He sucks in a breath to shout at McCree before he notices the obvious signs of abandonment.

 

“Used to be you had to show I.D. to get into Los Alamos,” McCree says, voice suddenly clear. When Hanzo glances over at him, the edges of him seem extraordinarily sharp. “Nowadays the Lab is gathering dust.”

 

Hanzo eases them past the broken boom barrier and suddenly they are in a small town on a plateau, cupped in the brown palm of a tall mountain chain, piñon giving way to ponderosa. The quaint strip malls and parking lots and townhouses and _green_ are surreal after a few hours of eternal desert; they are now at an elevation sufficient for rain and trees that look less like ambitious shrubbery and more like the ones Hanzo used to see on Fujisan’s blue slopes.

 

McCree leads him down side streets past a park with a pond and pavilion and into a neighborhood nestled in the foothills of the closest mountain peak. His directions are frighteningly coherent after his groggy rambling. Aware and intrigued, the dragons roll in Hanzo’s flesh and tighten on his bones, making his left wrist, elbow, and shoulder ache. For the nth time in six months, he wonders what may be lying under McCree’s skin.

 

Halfway up the mountain they pull into the driveway of an isolated casita. All of the green girding the base of the peak has turned to soot and charred wood this far up, but the casita is still shielded well enough from prying eyes.

 

“Wildfire in ’73 got most of the Jemez,” McCree explains as Hanzo shoves the truck into park. “Spared the property but shook a lot of folks up. No one will bother us here.”

 

“Get up,” Hanzo says, climbing over the console to retrieve their bags from the back seat. He rifles around in McCree’s things until he sees bright turquoise thread—he pulls out one of McCree’s spare serapes and tosses it to him. “Cover yourself until we get inside.”

 

McCree frowns and keeps his bloody hands folded. “The other one.”

 

Hanzo breathes out through his nose. He finds another serape in the duffel, this one patriotic. He doesn’t roll his eyes when McCree tugs it around his shoulders so it falls over the worst of his bloodstains but it’s a near thing.

 

“First time in the Southwest?” McCree asks when Hanzo jumps down from the truck and comes around to open his door. That sharp quality to him has faded and he is unfocused again. Hanzo helps him to the ground and nearly stumbles under all of McCree’s dead weight.

 

“I have been to Flagstaff,” Hanzo answers curtly, arranging them so that McCree’s arm across his shoulders looks companionable. Four years ago he had expended a great deal of energy losing a hitman in the Grand Canyon and had rewarded himself with a visit to the Lowell Observatory afterward.

 

“Arizona chile is second rate,” McCree says with feeling as they cross the pine-strewn yard. He stumbles a little on the porch step, hissing, and Hanzo shakes with the effort it takes to keep them upright. “I’ll show you the good stuff.”

 

“What I am hearing,” Hanzo says, looking pointedly at McCree when they reach the front door, “is the offer of a meal.”

 

“I _am_ a gentleman,” McCree agrees. He fumbles at his utility belt and produces a set of keys that ease into the casita’s lock. The door swings open into a short dark hall. 

 

Hanzo puts McCree down on the closest item of furniture, a wooden bench in the entryway, and kicks the door closed. “Your kit?” he asks.

 

“In the laundry,” McCree answers. He starts to unbuckle his chaps with fumbling fingers before slumping in his seat.

 

Hanzo has to open several doors in the dark before he finds the casita’s tiny laundry closet. There is, unbelievably, another serape hanging from the dry line strung along the ceiling, stiff with age and disuse; Hanzo lifts it aside and finds the kit on the shelf behind it. He ruffles through conventional first aid supplies for more efficient stock and pulls out a kit-sized biotic emitter. 

 

He takes it back to the foyer and puts it on the bench next to McCree. The stolen tech, a little outdated, lights up when he depresses it, weaker than its government-issued, full-sized combat field counterpart, but still effective if McCree’s immediate noise of relief is any indication.

 

“I will retrieve our belongings and secure the premises,” Hanzo announces.

 

McCree shudders and then looks up at Hanzo with dilated eyes. “Gimme a hot second and I’ll gussy up the place.”

 

Hanzo leaves him in the healing field and returns to the truck. He flits down the driveway in case anyone is somehow, somewhy looking in the yard and likely to catch sight of McCree’s blood on his henley. In the truck, wrinkling his nose at the metal scent in the air, he kneels on the console and pulls his travel bag and false guitar case from the backseat. These he takes back into the house and leaves beside McCree, who has his eyes closed and his head leaned against the wall.

 

On his second trip, he refolds McCree’s other serape and stuffs it back into his duffel. At closer glance he realizes that the turquoise is striped with other vibrant colors and embroidered with silver thread. He makes sure his folds are crisp before shouldering the bag and tossing McCree’s familiar red serape, a lost cause, across the blood-soaked passenger seat. He gathers up McCree’s hat and discarded glove from below the seat and then leaves the hot-wired truck unlocked.

 

Back in the house, McCree stirs as Hanzo sets down his things. “Much appreciated.”

 

Hanzo opens his case and takes out his disassembled Stormbow to get to the compartment underneath. He unpacks the handgun he uses for discretion and loads it. “How large is this property?”

 

“An acre or so,” McCree says, experimentally kicking off one shoe. He winces when he tries to extend his wounded leg and keeps the other shoe on. “Follow the fences.”

 

Hanzo considers the unexpected area. “Sensors? Wires?”

 

McCree nods. “Flares. A few feeds.”

 

Reluctantly impressed, Hanzo removes his unobtrusive holster from the case, buckles it on, and slots his gun in. “I’ll inform you if any are compromised.”

 

He pulls a jacket over his holster and bloody shirt. It’s too hot to look natural, though the air in the mountains is cooler than it was on the plain; he will have to explain it away if he crosses paths with any neighbors or hikers. They haven’t discussed the identity that McCree has crafted to go with his casita; he considers what stories he can spin without jeopardizing this safehouse for him.

 

“Gotta say,” McCree says when Hanzo turns back to the door. “You’re handy in a pinch.”

 

Hanzo tsks. “That is why they sent me with you.”

 

The cumulative majority of casual conversation in Hanzo’s life has been with Genji, meaning Hanzo defaults to antagonism by lifelong habit. For that reason he has so far avoided talking on base outside of briefing rooms. McCree surprises him by chuckling.

 

“Earned that,” he acknowledges. Hanzo notices for the first time that his smile is pug-mouthed and crooked. “I’ll fix you that meal as proper thanks.”

 

Hanzo ducks a quick nod and heads back out the door.

 

=

 

When Hanzo returns, the casita looks like an entirely different place.

 

The loveseat on the porch, bare when they arrived, is now padded with cushions the same sure red as McCree’s everyday serape. The eaves are hung with two of the straw-hatted, sun-dried chile ristras that Hanzo has seen in nearly every doorway they’ve passed, and the formerly empty rack in the porch corner is now filled with chopped wood. There’s even a welcome mat on the ground, asking _Red or Green?_ in cheeky font.

 

Inside, the foyer has been cleared and the lights turned on. Hanzo hangs his jacket on a hook above the bench, kicks his shoes under it, and follows the harlequin tile to the end of the entryway. 

 

To his left is a little living room, a two-seater, an armchair, a chest, and an antique furnace all somehow squeezed into the close space. The orange bulb in the old pendant light overhead makes the space seem warm.

 

To his right is a cozy kitchen, redolent with spices. The first glance makes his stomach drop—the wall hangings and window curtains and tablecloth and pot holders and sink mat are all rooster print. A second look reveals a small colony of cacti on top of the fridge and cupboards and window sill, sprouting flowers in such a riot of color that he can ignore the awful decor.

 

McCree is at the stove, bubbling something in a pot. “You’re quick about it.”

 

“You are not so incompetent yourself—“ Hanzo starts to say, meaning the sudden and masterful dressing of the house, before McCree turns around.

 

He looks like an entirely different man. He’s traded his flannel for a button-down, his thick pants for slacks. The beard that Hanzo has seen in every permutation of scruffiness has been shaved to distinguished stubble. There are gold-rimmed bifocals perched on his nose.

 

McCree beams at Hanzo’s startled scrutiny. “Joel’s a freelance writer.” He tips his head, sans hat, at the brewer releasing steam on the counter. “And a coffee prig.”

 

Hanzo recovers and goes to the kitchen table, which is crowded with several different monitors. Some screens show a few different angles of burnt forest, and the others show a few different angles on the casita. He scowls when he counts and realizes he missed two of McCree’s hidden cameras.

 

“ _Joel_ is well-fortified,” he says. He reminds himself not for the first time that McCree seems to make a concerted effort to be underestimated. “The perimeter is intact.”

 

“Scary how easy you rooted my set-up,” McCree replies, leaving the pot. He limps as he comes; the emitter probably died partway through the job. “I’m glad we’re on the same team.”

 

Hanzo lifts his chin the way he was taught to take praise. “You must travel often.”

 

“I follow the stories,” McCree confirms. “The neighbors’ll be glad to hear that I’m back.”

 

“You are so social?” Hanzo is surprised. The way that McCree drifts in and out of the Watchpoint, he had expected a reclusive identity.

 

“Gotta show off my posole.” McCree limps back to the stove. “Can you move that shit to the side?”

 

Hanzo lifts some of the monitors onto the sideboard to make room on the table. McCree brings over the pot as well as two bowls with a poise that speaks to a stint as a hand in some sunny southwest diner.

 

“Coffee?” McCree asks, going back to grab utensils.

 

Hanzo doesn’t drink coffee after noon as a rule, but now that McCree is not dying and he has tested their earthwork himself, the adrenaline crash is insistent. He lets McCree hand him a mug.

 

They sit side by side on the clear end of the table. It’s the closest that Hanzo has eaten next to anyone in ten years. McCree is almost too big for his handcraft wooden chair; it groans when he shifts to accommodate his leg.

 

Hanzo moves his bowl until it covers the rooster on his placemat before spooning a bite. Unfortunately McCree notices.

 

“That’s a no on the rustic charm?” he asks, one corner of his wide mouth tipped up.

 

Hanzo isn’t sure why he doesn’t simply lie. “Chickens are ugly creatures,” he declares.

 

The other side of McCree’s mouth curls up too. “You scared of birds?”

 

That is the fastest anyone has ever discovered Hanzo’s second worst secret. It had taken Genji an entire day at the zoo to realize the source of Hanzo’s foul mood. Hanzo feels curiously exposed. He hates McCree for three long seconds.

 

“It’s spiders for me,” McCree offers. “So you gotta handle whatever’s wandered inside since I been here last.”

 

Hanzo had thought McCree’s uncharacteristic admissions were a symptom of major blood loss. Perhaps it is simply being back home.“Fine,” he says.

 

Both of them polish off their bowls and take seconds. Hanzo grudgingly admits it’s the best meal he’s had in years. McCree shares the recipe with him but stresses that hatch chiles are non-negotiable. Hanzo doesn’t mention that he has no skill in the kitchen.

 

When McCree stands to refill their mugs, Hanzo is jolted anew by how seamlessly he has slipped into another skin. He stares at his broad back and frowns on a thought.

 

“I told you that your cover was poor,” he tells McCree. “Why did you not go to the casino like this?”

 

“Joel’s my best work,” McCree says, handing Hanzo their coffee. “Couldn’t risk all this on recon. Besides, Bernal didn’t even recognize me in my getup.”

 

Winston had extracted a binding statement from Hanzo during this mission’s briefing to keep the parameters of the recon job confidential, for it entailed info from formerly classified Blackwatch archives to which certain other agents of the recall had not yet achieved clearance. At first Hanzo had thought it a matter of course, more of Winston’s methodical reestablishment of protocol, until he read the file sent to his terminal and realized how private the mission really was.

 

According to the dossier, Tegan Bernal was one of three operatives, along with one Anita Anaya and one Jesse McCree, taken in during the Overwatch sting that hamstrung the Deadlock gang twenty years ago. (Hanzo admits to having been shocked by the records. He had long taken note of McCree’s vast competence, seemingly inexhaustible experience, and deadly ability, but prior gang affiliation hadn’t crossed his mind.) Anaya had gone to maximum, but Bernal and McCree had taken the offered indenture to Overwatch’s black ops.

 

The dates on file indicated that McCree had, for reasons off record, ghosted the organization shortly before its ruin. Evidence preserved in time logs and internal communications, however, implied that Bernal had been involved in the infighting that brought it down. After the fall, he had spirited away to the southwest where Deadlock activity had resumed, but it appeared that he had since become eager and willing to settle old debts with Talon resources.

 

Hanzo is confused. “Then why did he shoot?”

 

McCree laughs at the memory as he retells it, as though the situation had not nearly exsanguinated him mere hours ago. “I had my shirt open trying to get back in my gear and the idiota propositioned me. Laughed in his face and accidentally called him an old nickname when I turned him down.”

 

“McCree,” Hanzo begins, but it is a little humorous.

 

“I’ll get enough of that from base,” McCree says dismissively. He takes their bowls to the sink and then starts to wrap up the pot. “Go on and get familiar with the place. When you get back, we’ll debrief.”

 

Hanzo brings their mugs over and rinses them with the other dishes. When he glances over his shoulder, McCree tips his missing hat. Hanzo does roll his eyes this time, and the pug grin returns.

 

He leaves the kitchen to explore the doors that branch off of the living room. One is the laundry. One opens into a bathroom with red and brown tile. The other is a hallway which leads to the bedroom. Hanzo strides inside.

 

The west wall has a half-moon window at the top which lets in the last orange light of the day. Across from it is a queen bed with a nightstand. To Hanzo’s surprise, the other walls are taken up entirely by shelves overflowing with paper books, with more monitors displaying McCree’s security feeds acting like bookends. He catches his reflection in a mirror in the corner. 

 

It’s been most of a year and he still doesn’t recognize himself at first glance. He can’t decide if the undercut and piercings make him look younger or exaggerate his age. Genji had looked at him for a long time in the dim light of the dumpling spot where they had rendezvoused after their reunion, before sagely suggesting Hanzo dye his bun green. It had irritated him at the time, but now the memory makes his stomach clench.

 

Both of their bags are sitting in the open armoire. Hanzo goes over to replace his handgun in his guitar case leaning against the footboard. He changes his shirt, spares one last glance at the bed, and then returns to kitchen.

 

McCree has already set up a tablet, which blinks on and off with the effort of cycling through security precautions to link with Athena. Something crinkles in his hands—he opens a bag of butterscotch drops and tosses it on the table.

 

“Joel doesn’t smoke,” he says regretfully, popping two butterscotches at once.

 

McCree, shockingly quiet without his big-heeled boots and spurs, once stumbled upon Hanzo late at night in the mess eating an entire shortcake by himself, so Hanzo feels no qualms about grabbing a handful of the drops, ignoring McCree’s amused protest.

 

He drops into his chair, dragged close to McCree’s to ensure they are both visible to the tablet’s camera, and waits with him for the call to engage. He ignores McCree when he leans over to good-naturedly push the candy bag to his side of the table. 

 

=

 

Hanzo shivers. The chilly New Mexican nights continue to surprise him. The drastic temperature dives seem steeper here, nestled high up in the folds of a mountain. He no longer wonders why McCree, desert-bred, wears so many layers.

 

He does wonder why they’re sitting outside.

 

The belly of the chiminea on the back patio, ribbed with an intricate sun motif, glows red with an aromatic piñon-wood fire. Hanzo trades chairs to get closer to the crackling heat; the calf braces that he fits under his baggy pants when he wears plain shoes transmit the cold all too well. 

 

McCree limps outside with a blanket in one hand and two mugs in the other. Hanzo takes the blanket and intends to refuse more coffee before he smells cocoa and spice.

 

“Chile hot chocolate,” McCree announces. Hanzo takes a sip as soon as the mug is in his hands; in the steaming mountain cold, he is grateful for the way it burns down his throat.

 

McCree takes the chair opposite him, seemingly unbothered in just the turquoise serape from before. Hanzo notes the way he keeps his hot chocolate away from the cloth’s tasseled ends.

 

“So, Hiro,” McCree says between sips. “Land of Enchantment. What’s your verdict?”

 

Hanzo gives him a long blink. “Enchanting.”

 

McCree smiles much more readily here than he does on base, Hanzo notices. “I hope so. Got a whole week left in it.”

 

Winston had been grim on the call. Only Tracer, blinking around his lab in the background, giggled at McCree’s summary of events. McCree is too professional to have left a blood trail from the Starbird to the empty parking slot where their makeshift getaway truck had been parked, but it hadn’t taken long for Bernal’s associates to find his corpse anyway. A swarm of Deadlock grunts and Talon operatives are now scurrying across northern New Mexico like ants on a hill. Hanzo and McCree’s extraction has been both relocated and postponed.

 

It’s not the first time one of Hanzo’s missions has required extended cover. The last time had been a botched intel exchange in Nuremberg, which involved him posing as a photographer on holiday and following Reinhardt on a ‘guided tour’ through the Bavarian countryside, pretending to learn German while they waited to receive the coordinates of their new pickup.

 

Hanzo takes another drink. “What is there to do here?”

 

“Plenty,” McCree says, “if you like good food and a good hike.”

 

Hanzo does. He wonders how many appearances McCree will make in the town to keep the seams of his cover tight, and if he is expected to accompany him or not. “Are you working on a project now?”

 

McCree shakes his head. “Just my own shit.”

 

Athena will be running spy protocol above the region, but Hanzo and McCree will need to do their part to calculate the latitudinal and longitudinal spread of all the guns currently trying to pick up their trail. They’ll also need to determine the best route through enemy territory down to Roswell, where their transport will touch down a week from now on an empty lot owned by a colleague of Winston’s. 

 

They have their work cut out for them.

 

“Trying my hand at fiction this time,” McCree adds. “I’m considering an anthology.”

 

Hanzo spends a long time trying to figure out the double meaning in McCree’s words before it occurs to him that McCree is speaking plainly. “...Of poetry?” he asks finally, nose wrinkling.

 

McCree guffaws. “Please. Tell me how you really feel.” He leans over to poke the fire with his metal hand and revive it. “I’m a man of many talents.”

 

That much Hanzo has figured out for himself. Winston has been cycling through trial teams to determine optimal mission rosters, and since Hanzo and McCree as a unit have one of the highest completion and success rates, they have been paired together on their last three assignments. In that time Hanzo has seen McCree disarm a bioweapon with his prosthetic; crack an illegal bank vault without tripping any of its motion, infrared, magnetic, digital, or biotic sensors; and shoot eight men dead with six bullets, among other feats. That McCree is also a poet is only slightly stranger than the other discoveries Hanzo has made about him.

 

McCree must realize that Hanzo now knows the sealed-drawer details of his past. He wonders if he resents it the way Hanzo resents the base-wide knowledge of his own past.

 

“How will you wile the time?” McCree asks him.

 

Hanzo isn’t yet sure. They had determined in the kitchen that Hiro is a friend from abroad, visiting while Joel can be found in one place. Hanzo won’t reprise his Nuremberg cover here; he has no camera with him this time, and his snapshots of Bavaria had been, frankly, uninspired. He has no desire to be a calligrapher again, as he had in Beirut—he had actually sold three pieces before his mission there with Pharah ended, but holding a brush had returned him to the memories of kneeling for hours over sheets of ruined rice paper, a rap on his knuckles for every mistake.

 

“Research,” he declares, an impulse. It could be taken literally, but he elaborates, “I’m writing a paper.”

 

McCree quirks a brow, the one split by a tiny brown scar. He is not in the habit of digging, however, a virtue that Hanzo values. “That’s all beyond me,” is all he says, lifting his mug.

 

Hanzo cuts his eyes at him. “I highly doubt that.”

 

McCree looks a little pleased. “You’re too kind, friend.”

 

Coming from him, it sounds both odd and not. Hanzo has not been called anything of the kind in more years than he has been in exile, but in McCree’s easy drawl it comes across quite natural. Hanzo wonders if that is how McCree manages to exude an aura of amiability while spending nearly as little off-duty time as Hanzo in the common areas of the Watchpoint.

 

Genji had called McCree an old friend upon their introduction, and his file indicated that he had long relationships with all of the returning Overwatch members. Hanzo wonders then why McCree wears his hat pulled low back in Gibraltar, why people like Mercy and Torbjörn complain about never being able to find him these days.

 

“It will be a working vacation,” Hanzo says, swirling his hot chocolate.

 

“The worst kind,” McCree agrees. His eyes slide over Hanzo’s shoulder, tracking through the shadow beyond the firelight tossed out by the chiminea. “Ah, there he is.”

 

Something rustles in the scrub at the edges of the patio. Hanzo is prepared to use his mug as he may need until a lanky cat slips into the light and trots up to McCree’s chair.

 

“My favorite neighbor,” McCree says, swinging his bad leg aside so he can reach down and smooth a big hand over the cat’s head and shoulders. “Was wondering when you’d show up.”

 

Hanzo can hear the cat purring from his seat. He watches it dig its claws into McCree’s slacks and stretch luxuriously before leaping onto McCree’s thighs. McCree just winces and pulls aside his serape so the cat can knead his lap and then curl up on him with imperial familiarity.

 

It glares at Hanzo with slitted, glowing eyes from between the turquoise folds. Hanzo glares back.

 

“This is Reylito,” McCree says. “He belongs to Marisol down the road. Somehow he always knows when I’m about.”

 

The cat only breaks its stare when McCree scratches his fingers under its chin, closing its eyes and tipping its head back demandingly. McCree tells it something in Spanish and the cat purrs louder.

 

“You are popular,” Hanzo notes sourly. He has not liked cats since the time Genji and their eldest cousin Yahiko pranked him by leaving his gi outside for the Hanamura strays to piss on, a lark for which his father punished him on account of being careless with his gear.

 

“Fame hasn’t changed me,” McCree assures him. He sets his drained mug aside and leans back in his chair, petting the cat and turning his face toward the fire.

 

Hanzo is used to the man brooding quietly with him over a bottle in the unused hangars the rest of the agents have yet to clear, or debating tactics with him in the hold of their transport while their teammates nap, or preparing a strategically-timed meal next to him in the empty mess. All of this—the glasses, the cat, the easy lassitude—is new.

 

“Give it time,” Hanzo says into his mug, draining it.

 

“Hear that? He don’t have faith in me, Reylito,” McCree says, rubbing the cat between the eyes. The cat licks his thumb and meows.

 

Hanzo drains the last of his chile hot chocolate so he doesn’t catch the cat’s smug eyes again. “Is there more of this?” he asks, hefting his mug.

 

“Plenty,” McCree says, looking smug himself. “We’ll fill you up.”

 

He stands up with the cat, paying no attention to the claws that dig into his thick forearms, and leans forward to snag Hanzo’s empty drink with a finger, brushing him with his serape’s tassels. Then he and the cat disappear into the casita, a lilt of more murmured Spanish trailing them inside.

 

Outside, Hanzo leans away from the chiminea and shrugs out of his borrowed blanket, a little too warm.


	2. Kiva

Hanzo stirs at dawn, thirsty. It’s been so long since he rose after the sun that he is briefly confused by the rosy cast to the bedroom. At first he thinks he is dreaming the thin cloud rippling along the ceiling, until the scent of resin tickles his nose.

 

He rolls off the mattress and into his braces. In the living room he finds the incense burner responsible: a miniature horno trailing herb smoke from its small mouth. It's so quaint that he obeys whim and thumbs the curve of the baked clay, getting fragrant soot on his skin.

 

In the empty kitchen he searches for a glass without rooster cut and drinks from a pitcher in the fridge until his skin no longer feels stretched tight across his bones. On the table is a thermos and an insulated plate, a note stuck to the top scribbled with McCree’s slanted handwriting: _huevos rancheros, great for jet lag_.

 

As he breakfasts, Hanzo looks between the monitors and the tablets spread out on the other side of the table. One screen shows the casita’s driveway; he can just make out McCree’s long legs sticking out from under the engine of their truck. He turns his attention to the maps and notes on another: holo-projections of New Mexican terrain glowing red in places with McCree’s predictions on enemy encampments, yellow with his uncertainty in others.

 

Yesterday they had spoken well into the night, most of it Joel and Hiro’s drabble, only heading in when the cat stretched out of McCree’s lap and trotted back into the darkness. Hanzo hadn’t held a conversation so long since his father had announced his eligibility to the entire Kanto region, when he had had to entertain the host of suitors come to besiege Shimada castle, vying for a territory deal or percentage split with the clan. McCree, thankfully, made for much better company.

 

He had waved Hanzo down the casita’s hall with the assurance that insomnia made the bed more of an ornament. Eyes burning with firesmoke and fatigue, Hanzo had accepted, assuming the offer to be more of McCree’s peculiar gallantry, like his insistence on entering a room last or collecting Hanzo’s training arrows in the range alongside his own casings. He sees now that McCree’s night really must have been sleepless. 

 

He had anticipated a similar problem, lying in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar land, but a twenty-eight hour day and three cups of hot chocolate put his face into the pillow well enough.

 

He rinses his empty plate in the sink and then shuts himself in the bathroom, wrestling with the shower faucet until he gets tepid water going. Out of habit he relieves himself and brushes his teeth as he washes, finishing up just as the mirror starts to fog. He steals a towel from the rack above the toilet, checking first that it isn’t yet another serape.

 

In the bedroom he trades yesterday’s clothes, which had doubled as pajamas, for some of McCree’s wardrobe. His spare outfits are flecked with blood from their getaway and still soaking in the laundry, so he rifles around in Joel’s closet, pushing past button-downs and slacks until he finds an athletic sweater that looks broad enough through the shoulders. He tugs it on and, after a second thought, tugs the blanket from the bed on too.

 

He refills the thermos in the kitchen before toeing on his shoes and stepping outside. The pink dawn has yellowed into daylight which shatters on the sharp tops of the trees and falls to the ground in bright shards. The mountain quiet is broken only by birdsong and McCree’s mazy whistling.

 

The truck looks better now than when they had stolen it, body waxed and hubcaps rinsed. Hanzo had already changed the plates before they peeled out of the casino yesterday, but McCree has changed them again. Through the windshield Hanzo can see a charm hanging from the rearview, some sort of long-tailed bird.

 

Curled up in a spot of brittle sunlight on the hood is the cat. It lifts its head long enough to judge him before lying back down and tucking its nose between its paws.

 

Returning the look, Hanzo crosses the driveway. “You will crash later, badly.”

 

“You got that right,” McCree answers from under the truck. He slides himself out, tossing aside a wire brush and lowering the rag pressed to his nose and mouth. “Chassis rust,” he starts to explain, pushing off a pair of goggles, until he sees the thermos in Hanzo’s outstretched hand. “Ain’t you a peach.”

 

He takes a gulp of coffee and wipes his mouth, eyeing Hanzo above the blanket. Abruptly Hanzo realizes that he never put up his topknot.

 

“Did you rest at all?” he asks, reaching up to twist his hair into a damp bun.

 

“Here and there.” McCree shrugs. “I’m used to it—never slept a natural eight hours in my life.”

 

“That explains much,” Hanzo murmurs. McCree makes a noise around another sip of coffee. “What is the damage?”

 

“Not bad for an antique.” McCree rubs the truck’s bumper. “Just needed a little love. She’ll be ready for our road trip.”

 

“Good,” Hanzo says, thinking. According to McCree’s notes, they will have to cross approximately two hundred thirty miles in the truck, assuming no need to lose any tails or make any diversions. Some of those miles will no doubt be as dusty and treacherous as the roads they drove in on. No matter what tweaks McCree makes, the truck will never be up to hot pursuit or a firefight, but it is just nondescript enough that he would rather not have to steal another vehicle.

 

He notices McCree’s eyes still on him. “What?” 

 

McCree blinks. “Thinking we could drop by the library today, get some grub afterward.”

 

The last time Hanzo was in a library, he garroted a would-be assassin in the stacks with a guitar string from his fake case. He raises an eyebrow. “Is your card in date?”

 

McCree spreads his hands. “What kind of journalist would I be otherwise?”

 

“You have something you must reference?” Hanzo asks. If he had to assume, he would guess that McCree likely keeps a second kit and amm box in the library, perhaps even materials for an extra cover.

 

“Usually do,” McCree says. “I expect you’re in the same boat, paper and all.”

 

Hanzo nods. McCree has already zoned the state according to what he must know of Deadlock and Blackwatch-poached Talon tactics; with a good map, Hanzo can draft their route through his preliminary mockup.

 

“It’s a date, then,” McCree says, draining the thermos.

 

Before Hanzo can respond, someone calls down the driveway, “Joel? You home, honey?”

 

“Sure am, Mrs. Cathy,” McCree calls back, getting to his feet and brushing off his pants.

 

“Oh, Joel,” another voice says. “When were you going to say so?”

 

There are two older women at the end of the drive, standing hand-in-hand and wrapped in scarves patterned like McCree’s serape. They reach out when McCree limps around the truck; he sidesteps their fussing with an excuse about a twisted ankle.

 

Hanzo had noticed the approach of crunching footsteps and murmured conversation; he had assumed they belonged to climbers seeking the trails he had found above the property during yesterday’s scouting. McCree seems both unbothered and unsurprised to see otherwise.

 

“Woulda been by later, Mrs. Gloria,” McCree says. “We only got in yesterday.”

 

The women notice Hanzo. He manages to find a mild expression just before their attention falls on him. They take stock of him with the brazenness of gossipmongers, looking him plainly up and down. Most likely these are the owners of the town tabloid that McCree had mentioned last night.

 

“Good morning,” Hanzo offers.

 

“Hello, dear,” one of the ladies says, at the same time the other repeats meaningfully, “We?”

 

Hanzo realizes his mistake at once. His shoes are untied, his hair is rumpled from sleep and a shower, and—most damningly—his sweater has _Morricone_ ironed on the front in blocky white letters.

 

He glances at McCree. He has trouble interpreting the look that crosses the man’s face, but he thinks that he too had overlooked this potentiality. McCree is a true chameleon, however, and changes colors between heartbeats.

 

“This is Hiro,” he says, with enough of a rumble in his chest to suggest just what the women are wondering. “Hiro, this is Mrs. and Mrs. Campbell.”

 

“It is a pleasure to meet you.” Hanzo bows. His hair comes loose again; helpfully, he tucks it behind his ear with what little, brittle coquetry he can muster.

 

The Campbells are delighted. McCree had mentioned that he usually relies on them tolegitimize his cover; there is, in his words, _nothing like reading someone’s juicy tidbits in a local mag to make them real_. Joel will seem particularly real this week, Hanzo muses.

 

“You too, dear,” Mrs. Gloria says. “Joel didn’t mention he was bringing company home.” She eyes McCree. “Or that he was home.”

 

“We spied this beater chugging up the mountain yesterday.” Mrs. Cathy gestures toward the truck. “Imagine our surprise when we found it in your driveway. You could have waved, honey.”

 

“Why this antique anyway?” Mrs. Gloria asks. “It’s not your style, Joel.”

 

McCree kisses her cheek. “I saw it for cheap and couldn’t resist. It’s Hiro's first time here—thought I would show him around all authentic-like.”

 

“Bills over bygones, Joel. You should spoil your guests,” Mrs. Gloria says, tutting. “Especially the pretty ones.” She winks at Hanzo.

 

He attempts his best humble smile. He isn’t sure that it is credible; modesty has never become him. 

 

“One sweet face and you forgot all your manners,” Mrs. Cathy laments. “And your friends.”

 

McCree looks entertained by the bullying, in no hurry to clear his own name. Hanzo has never been introduced to anyone’s neighbors before; the protocol escapes him. 

 

“Our apologies,” he says. “We have been rather occupied since we arrived.”

 

The Campbells titter. Hanzo realizes why and deliberately doesn’t frown. This is why his father used to assign him to balancing books and securing supply lines—he has always been too linear for much else. Fortunately it works in their favor now.

 

“Of course,” Mrs. Gloria says knowingly.

 

“I had to fix up this old girl first thing,” McCree adds. “So she don’t die on us in the middle of town.”

 

Mrs. Gloria hums. “If you say so.”

 

“No doubt Joel wanted to keep you to himself, Hiro,” Mrs. Cathy says, sidestepping subtlety entirely. “How long have you two known each other?”

 

“Let the man wake up,” McCree intercedes. He shares a convincing look with Hanzo, exasperated and apologetic. It’s not difficult to return it in a way the Campbells can misconstrue as they like. “And we agreed, ma’am—no interviews on Morricone property.”

 

“You know me, honey,” Mrs. Cathy says without chagrin, looking between them. “So easily carried away.”

 

“It’s been ages,” Mrs. Gloria points out, pinching McCree’s arm.

 

“How’s this,” McCree proposes, tugging both women close. “After we settle in, we’ll catch up with you lovely ladies at Bandelier.”

 

The Campbells accept his invitation with enthusiasm. They crowd the truck and coo at Reylito before allowing McCree to herd them back down the drive, where they take their leave after whispering something to McCree in pidgin Spanish. They wave goodbye to Hanzo and then disappear through the charred trees as suddenly as they appeared.

 

“Don’t mind them,” McCree says as he comes back, gathering his tools in his metal hand and scooping up the cat in the other. “You find your breakfast?”

 

Aware that the Campbells are likely peeking through the ponderosa, Hanzo nods and lets his dimples show—a Shimada failsafe. “You will spoil me like this.”

 

McCree, putting his toolbox back together one-handed, returns his smile with one he hasn’t seen before. “That’s the plan. Been told I could stand to spoil a little more.”

 

In his youth Hanzo could fluster even rival lieutenants with a look. McCree takes his pretense in stride. Hanzo supposes age has softened some of his edges. 

 

“I have no complaints,” he says, reaching for the toolbox.

 

McCree looks a little pleased again. He lets Hanzo take his things, tucking the cat into his chest when it tries to paw at a string hanging from Hanzo’s borrowed blanket.

 

“Perhaps one complaint,” Hanzo says.

 

McCree chuckles. “Play nice, Reylito.”

 

He gestures Hanzo ahead of him and then, when he heads obligingly back to the porch, drops his hand to the small of Hanzo’s back. The contact is muffled by the sweater and blanket, but Hanzo still stiffens like a man electrocuted. 

 

He has to unclench muscle by muscle. The last man to touch him in such a way—an amorous hippie at a festival in Budapest, which Hanzo had joined in order to shake a persistent headhunter—woke up forty-five minutes later with a dislocated shoulder. Hiro is apparently not averse to such familiarity, however.

 

He lets McCree escort him the short way to the front door. The moment they cross the threshold the fleeting touch disappears and Hanzo again has a generous berth. Inside the casita, he allows himself to scowl.

 

It is fortunate that he took precautions unloading the truck and walking the grounds yesterday. “You said we would not be bothered here,” Hanzo reminds McCree, rising on his toes to put the toolbox back above the foyer’s coatrack.

 

“That weren’t bothering,” McCree says easily. He sets the cat on the entryway bench so he can unbutton his rust-flecked shirt. “That was insurance.”

 

He strips out of the age-yellowed tee underneath, balling up both and tossing them into the laundry. He makes no concessions to Hanzo’s presence—they have stripped in front of one another too many times for reservation. Gooseflesh raises the many hairs on his arms except for the places where brown scars cross his dusky skin. 

 

The smoky morning rouge in the casita flatters him more than the sterile fluorescents on base. Hanzo frowns at the cat as he hands over his blanket.

 

“If I have complicated your cover, I apologize,” he says.

 

“You did me a favor,” McCree disagrees, draping the blanket around his barrel chest like another serape. “And I’d be mighty obliged if you’d keep it up. The Campbells are good folk, but ravenous. This’ll keep them full for a bit.” 

 

The cat wiggles impatiently on the bench, its tail lashing Hanzo’s thigh. McCree doesn’t flinch when it leaps onto his shoulders, just steadies it with a hand and totes it across the living room.

 

“Careful around those sharks,” he warns over his shoulder. “They smell secrets like blood in the water.”

 

“Duly noted,” Hanzo says, eyeing the fur streaking his pant leg. He leans down to scrub off the cat hair and spies McCree’s pug grin in the corner of his eye. Before he can level a look at him, McCree disappears into the bedroom. 

 

“Let me powder my nose,” he calls through the wall. “Then we’ll head out.”

 

“Bring me a different shirt when you are done,” Hanzo requests. If the Campbells can be trusted to spread the word, he sees no reason to make a fool of himself again in front of whichever of Joel’s acquaintances they may encounter while they’re out.

 

“Aw, Hiro.” McCree sounds amused. “What’s wrong with the one you got on?”

 

Hanzo doesn’t appreciate McCree’s chuckle or the timely meow that comes through the wall with it. He says something unflattering in Japanese and goes to the bathroom to retrieve a hairband.

 

=

 

They drop Reylito off on their way into town.

 

The passenger seat in the truck is splotchy and discolored but no longer stiff with dried blood; the cabin smells like the stringent solution McCree must have applied to the upholstery to get the worst of the stains out. Huddled in McCree’s lap, the cat sniffs the fabric and sneezes for the rest of the short ride down the road.

 

After leaning out his window to put the cat down on Marisol’s mailbox, McCree gives Hanzo directions to the library. “It ain’t far. Nothing is, small town like this.”

 

“I am familiar with the nature of small towns,” Hanzo says without thinking, and then grimaces. Loose lips are apparently contagious.

 

Hanamura had seemed so old and vast when he was a child, the high ceilings and tiered chambers of his ancestral home so lofty, the twisting streets of the secluded village so ancient—an illusion that hadn’t lasted through adolescence. Once he learned how to scale walls, he realized how tight the bars of his cage really were, how thin-coated the gilding. There was no dragon coiled around Hanamura’s bulwark, bearing the village through the clouds as his mother used to tell him; there were only the chutes that led down to the modern districts of the city built around the sakura mountain. 

 

Hanzo is ready to parry questions with belligerence, but McCree only hums an even note of acknowledgement and coaxes the truck’s patchy radio from desert ambience to something as vibrant and homegrown as his turquoise serape.

 

“Good old Al Hurricane,” McCree sighs wistfully.

 

The song wheezing through the truck’s ancient speakers is so grainy that it’s obviously from long before McCree’s time. Given the books in the casita, the vaquero getup, and the faithful use of vintage matches with his cigarillos, Hanzo is not quite surprised.

 

The charm hanging from the rearview swings every time he eases them around a rhyolite-flecked shoulder of rock. “Is that necessary?” he asks.

 

“Gives our girl some personality,” McCree explains. “Roadrunner is the state bird, actually.”

 

“Of course,” Hanzo says darkly. They come upon the middle of town before McCree can rib him about it.

 

The library is a smooth-cut granite building close to the town’s pond, a little hidden by a screen of tall green pines. The mid-morning sun glints off the empty parking lot in a way that promises strong heat soon. There is a playground in the wood chips in front of the building, as well as a small skatepark occupied by several kids on hoverboards and blades. As soon as they exit the truck, McCree is at Hanzo’s side, his big palm falling again to Hanzo’s waist.

 

Hanzo is better prepared for the contact this time around: only the hairs at the nape of his neck tingle and raise. “How long do you need?” he asks, slowing his brisk pace to accommodate McCree’s limp.

 

“Hour or two?” McCree guesses. “I’ll come fetch you.”

 

“Fine,” Hanzo agrees. Their escape route will not plan itself—he has enough to occupy him.

 

The inside of the library is more striking than its exterior. The doors open to a long curved desk staffed by several librarians, omnic and otherwise, who wave at their entrance; a huge holoscreen showing a variety of flyers and announcements: _Nahuatl Night—All Speaking Levels Welcome!, NO BEVERAGES IN THE VR CARRELS_ , and _Jemez Hearts Give-a-thon Ends Today_ among those Hanzo can see at a glance; a series of painting and sculptures in the earthy tones and striking blues of much of the New Mexican art Hanzo has seen; and a surprising pair of elevators. He hadn’t thought the building so big.

 

Directly beyond the doors is an alcove stacked with precarious towers of books and films in obsolete paper and disc form. They get no farther than the little room before they are accosted.

 

“Morricone! The man, the menace.” A very elderly man pokes his head around a tower. “Finally come to pick up your order, eh?”

 

McCree slides his hand to Hanzo’s hip and brings him over. “Eli. You held it for me?” he asks, genuine pleasure in his voice.

 

The elderly man snorts from within the fortress of cases. “Of course I did. You’re the only one who wants these old things anyway.” He emerges from the alcove with a package of actual VHS tapes.

 

“I couldn’t find _The Ox-Bow Incident_ or _Woman in the Dunes_ but—” he starts before he sees Hanzo. “Oh, hello. Another collector?”

 

“Eli, meet Hiro,” McCree introduces. “Hiro, Elijah Bermeo, the antique authority in these parts.”

 

“I’m hardly old enough to be called an antique,” Eli quips, reaching out to shake Hanzo’s hand. “How do you do.”

 

Hanzo is charmed despite himself. “A pleasure to meet you.” Getting the hang of things, he adds, “You must be the authority on Joel’s tastes then.”

 

McCree splutters but Eli talks over him. “He’s a dusty one,” he agrees. “I’d never retrieved a tape for anyone until he came in asking about our archives. Next he’ll want the microfiche!”

 

“Ganging up ain’t nice,” McCree objects good-naturedly. “I’ll take that.” He hands Eli a tip against the elderly man’s protests in exchange for the videos. “And I’ll take this.” He gently pulls Hanzo into his side. “We’re on a schedule, Eli—otherwise I’d let you two carry on.”

 

“Pity,” Eli says. “You seem like the real thing, Hiro.”

 

Hanzo lifts his chin before it occurs to him to fake demureness. “You are too kind.”

 

“Quit trying to steal him,” McCree grumbles, squeezing Hanzo. He winks at Eli. “We’ll catch you on the way out.”

 

“Let me know how the films play.” Eli waves them off. “And no funny business in the stacks!”

 

McCree gives a flippant wave over his shoulder and then leads them on. They pass into a round stone chamber, the apparent nexus of the building, where he withdraws his bold hold. Hanzo’s skin pebbles in the building’s cool air without McCree’s curious heat.

 

“I’ll be in the poetry,” McCree announces. “The regular catalogue is through there, but they got some old school books you can ask to flip through too. Downstairs is mostly for kids. There’s a gallery in here if you get bored.”

 

“I will find my way,” Hanzo says, smoothing down his gooseflesh.

 

“Make sure you study up an appetite,” McCree advises. He tips his missing hat again. “See you in two shakes.”

 

They part ways. Hanzo goes into the reading room straight ahead where the few other library-goers are engrossed in the room’s terminals. The large chamber is lined with rows of carrels with digital access to the library’s stock. Hanzo takes his seat at one in the blindspot of the library’s surveillance cameras and begins a casual, roundabout search on New Mexican roadways.

 

It takes three-quarters of an hour to assemble five potential routes through the state based on his memory of McCree’s notes, each one disguised by queries about native food, clothing, languages, and landmarks. He pays extra to print his searches on paper instead of transferring them to his own tablet, and waits for fifteen minutes in one of the stone room’s plush chairs.

 

When McCree doesn’t come for him, he gets up. He takes a winding stone staircase down to a cushion-lined pit filled with children listening to a librarian read in Spanish, explores the unusual, labyrinthine gallery, and walks along the curved wall of one wing of the library, looking out the windows at the charred mountains buttressing the west. Eventually he comes upon the paper books, pausing when he realizes he’s wandered into the sciences.

 

Curiosity pilots him down the shelves until he sees the kind of titles he used to study at university, before he transferred to the classes his father had already paid for him to ace. He obeys a strong throb of nostalgia and grabs a few after getting clearance from a nearby reference bot, hauling them to a table outfitted with its own terminal.

 

_Equations of Planetary Dynamics, Hamiltonian Mechanics, Elements of Non-Euclidean Geometries_. Hanzo rubs the waxy binding of the textbooks before creaking them open. The sight of the formulas and axioms on the pages transports him back to the long nights and endless coffee pots and countless pens sacrificed to his ill-fated double major. It had all been for nothing, once his father discovered his disobedience, but he couldn’t count the sweat and sleeplessness among his regrets.

 

On a whim he takes up the pad and stylus provided with the terminal. He pulls the _Planetary Dynamics_ book toward him and flips through it, stopping at the first calculation he sees.

 

It’s been nineteen years since he’s done any math more rigorous than the geometry necessary to maximize damage from his scatter arrows. For a few minutes he worries the corner of the page in a way that will surely earn him a library fine, until the cobwebs in his brain blow free and he remembers Kepler's laws.

 

He marks up the pad with diagrammatic scribbles until he finds the answer.

 

The satisfaction of the solution feels something like a mouthful of sake. He had missed this, the gratification he had given up decades ago for duty. He can hardly stop himself from looking at the next problem, and the one after that, and so on until he has several pages of derivations on the pad like the overperformer Genji accused him of being when he used to bully Hanzo into checking his work before their tutors.

 

He has no idea how much time passes before McCree finds him.

 

“Beautiful stuff,” he says suddenly at Hanzo’s elbow.

 

He nearly gets a stylus to the gut. Hanzo forces his hand back to the table and asks, “You are finished?”

 

McCree nods, shifting his weight in his wingtips like he’s been standing there a while. Even in close proximity, he makes no sound. “You ready to go?”

 

Hanzo looks down at the calculations on his pad. His integrals are crooked from lack of practice and his equations uneven. He deletes the solutions and closes the textbook. “Yes.”

 

They exit the way they came. As they walk back through the stone chamber, McCree puts a hand on his shoulder blade, his fingers tickling the well of Hanzo’s back. Against his will Hanzo tenses; somehow McCree feels the micromotion and slides his grip up to Hanzo’s nape, his palm warm and rough on the first vulnerable knobs of his spine.

 

“Take care of him!” Eli bids on the way out. 

 

Hanzo isn’t sure which one of them he means. They both wave goodbye.

 

=

 

For lunch they park outside a restaurant textured like a riverbed, built of stacked and mortared rocks that must have come from the canyons around the town. _Venessa’s_ blinks in neon cursive above the entrance. Inside there are purple pear cacti in pots between the tables and paintings of the Lady of Guadalupe on the walls.

 

They sit at a booth much too small for men of their masses; their legs tangle under the tabletop. McCree must be able to feel the cool sturdy metal of Hanzo’s braces, but Hanzo can’t feel much beyond the pressure of the contact. The braces are not as advanced as his battle greaves—their design sacrifices sensation for strength.

 

McCree orders for them. “The gentleman will have the blue chicken enchiladas, and I’ll take the chile relleno. Beers for the both of us, please.”

 

Their waitress looks at them indulgently. “Coming your way.”

 

When she’s gone, Hanzo asks, “Did you find what you needed at the library?” He hadn’t kept tabs on McCree and was hardly convinced he had really been in the poetry for the entirety of their visit.

 

“Sure did.” McCree sits back in his seat, making their knees knock. He scratches through the reddish stubble going to scruff again on his jaw. “I’m good to go for our drive-through.”

 

So their preparation was progressing well. Hanzo nods. “I must ask you about some sight-seeing down south, when we return home.”

 

For a moment McCree’s expression is strange. “You got it. Been looking up places you want to stop?”

 

“I have made a list.” Hanzo pats the papers in his pockets.

 

“Busy bee,” McCree observes. At Hanzo’s unimpressed look, his crooked grin slants his mouth. “You were mighty occupied when I found you.”

 

He doesn’t say it like a question, but Hanzo still finds himself inexplicably answering, “I had to review the differential maths for my paper. I believe they say _use it or lose it_.”

 

He purses his lips as soon as the words leave his mouth, appalled by his own admission. In all these years he hadn’t even told Genji about his wayward studies.

 

All of McCree’s immense focus narrows on him; his attention feels like a brand. “Got a head for numbers myself, but not physics.”

 

“Astrophysics,” Hanzo corrects, and curses himself.

 

“Stars, is it?” McCree says, perking up, before he visibly masters himself. “Never mind. I know you keep your shit hush-hush.”

 

He means more than Hiro’s work, of course. Somehow his withdrawal makes the impulse rise in Hanzo again, worse.

 

“Asteroids and comets,” he says.

 

That was what he would have researched, anyway, had his father not sent a few discreet brothers to the faculty whose project on near-Earth objects he meant to join.

 

“I was math and physics,” he admits, feeling strangely hot, “with a concentration in astronomy.”

 

Every year the memories of his mother become more frayed and faded, but he can never forget the night she hauled him and his brother to the hipped roof of the castle for a picnic under the Geminid shower. Genji had been more interested in the candy she had packed, but Hanzo had clutched the roof tiles and watched the searing blitz of the first few meteors with rapt attention. His breath had caught in his throat when the early, lonely shooting stars had multiplied into a torrent that looked like a river of fireworks rushing across the sky. It was a memory that followed him to university; the fiery trails were burned onto his eyes, and had, briefly, blinded him to the reality of his bondage. 

 

“Damn,” McCree whistles, startling Hanzo’s thoughts away from his mother’s fragile smile in the rippling shower-light. “That’s something.”

 

Hanzo feels a little peeled, like he has pried apart his skin and shown the raw, pink muscle underneath. He frowns at the Virgin on the wall behind McCree’s head and shuts any other secrets behind his teeth.

 

Their beers arrive and the waitress sets a plate of steaming, powdery pastry between them. Hanzo takes a pull from his bottle straightaway; back on base McCree will usually make a quiet, errant gibe when he drinks too fast, but here he pushes Hanzo’s beer aside and holds out some of the bread.

 

“Sopapilla,” he says. When Hanzo reaches out, however, he catches his wrist loosely. The dragons ripple under the touch, flexing his bones painfully with their slithering.

 

“Like this.” McCree takes a bottle from the condiment rack on the table and upends it over the pastry. Honey drips thick and viscous across the bread, making the sprinkle of sugar flakes on top twinkle. He releases his lazy hold. “Try it.”

 

Hanzo waits for the static in his forearm to settle before lifting his eyes to McCree’s, hooded in the restaurant’s low lighting. He can feel the waitress’s attention on them from the hostess bar so he simply obeys.

 

The pastry is very doughy and very sweet and very much to his taste. He licks honey and powder from his lips and takes another bite before he is done with the first. McCree snorts and snatches it back.

 

“Greedy,” he accuses, smiling like he had in the driveway earlier. “Save some for the rest of us.”

 

“Order another,” Hanzo demands, thumbing honey from the corner of his lips.

 

“Yes, sir,” McCree says, waving down the waitress without looking away.

 

They finish three more sopapillas with their lunches. By the end of the meal Hanzo’s pantwaist digs uncomfortably into his skin and his stomach protests the weight of dairy and beans. He and McCree are leaned back in their seats, their legs a gordian knot; the gunslinger’s knees dig into the muscle of his thighs.

 

“I cannot move,” Hanzo informs him.

 

McCree groans. “Wait until the itis sets in.”

 

Their waitress sweeps by with the check and Hanzo pays before McCree can sit up straight, ignoring his protests. When the woman returns, she’s carrying a box twisted up in a to-go bag.

 

“On the house,” she croons. “Since you two are so sweet.” 

 

Hanzo grew up on free service and offerings from those of Hanamura’s storefronts trying to curry favor and Shimada clemency. Once the owner of the arcade by the castle, in danger of eviction, had sent Hanzo home with a pair of five hundred year old daisho, ostensibly as gifts for his eighteenth birthday; his father had checked them with an appraiser before extending the woman’s lease. He has never been given anything for this before.

 

McCree looks at him across the table. “Ain’t we just.”

 

He catches Hanzo’s eyes the way he sometimes does back on base when the briefing room is loud with competing voices and debate has stalled for the third time—like they are two islets in the middle of a very wide sea. Hanzo sends the look back as he always does, with a raised brow and tacit agreement. 

 

When he peeks inside the box, he finds a small tres leches cake tucked between two more sopapillas.

 

McCree leans forward to peek too and wags his scarred eyebrow. “I'll trade a sopapilla for half the cake.”

 

Hanzo feels the dragons throb once more, though McCree keeps his callused hands to himself. He licks the last of the sugar from his mouth and says, “You assume we are sharing.”

 

His lip twitches at McCree’s toothy laughter.

 

=

 

They have a short interlude at the casita before their engagement with the Campbells.

 

McCree goes straight from the truck in the driveway to the armchair in the living room, sinking into the cushions with a wounded noise. His eyes close the moment his head falls back against the rest. “Ten minutes,” he promises.

 

His shoulders span the seat back and his outstretched legs nearly cross the rug. “You should take the bed,” Hanzo tells him, but McCree is already snoring.

 

The stack of tapes still in McCree’s hands lists precariously over the side of the armchair. Hanzo huffs, walks over, and trades the films for McCree’s serape before turning toward to the kitchen to put their dessert in the fridge. He pulls out his papers and sets them down in front of McCree’s tablets with the intent to keep busy, but he is distracted by a commotion starting up on the porch. When he answers the door, his hand on the knife below his waistband, he finds only Reylito, scratching fervently at the loveseat and yowling.

 

“Quiet,” Hanzo says. The cat falls silent. “What do you want?”

 

It wriggles until it can pull its claws from the wood of the seat and comes to brush against his pants. He pulls his leg away instinctively and the cat takes the opportunity to rush in through the open front door.

 

“Joel is sleeping,” he protests, but it’s too late. The cat trots into the living room and climbs into McCree’s lap with its usual entitlement. McCree doesn’t even stir, so Hanzo decides the matter doesn’t concern him.

 

He gets as far as identifying potential fuel and food sources along the first of his drafted routes before McCree sits up, exactly ten minutes later.

 

“How’d you get in here?” he rasps, palming Reylito’s head.

 

“It rang the doorbell,” Hanzo says without looking up.

 

McCree chuckles. “Old toms do learn new tricks.” He folds the cat into his serape and comes over, bringing the lingering smell of their lunch, butter and honey.

 

Hanzo flicks his eyes up and lowers his tablet. “If you need more rest, take it.” He frowns at the puffiness under the gunslinger’s eyes. “I will not carry you if you collapse while we are out.”

 

“Good to know I can count on you. Naw, I’m up,” McCree insists. He looks over Hanzo’s shoulder at his notes. “That's some progress. We could leave day after tomorrow, I expect.”

 

That is a much more optimistic estimate than Hanzo would have supplied. “What would we do until the extraction?”

 

McCree rests his chin on Reylito’s head and the corner of his mouth curls upward. “Whatever the hell we want.”

 

Hanzo looks at him, unimpressed, and then at the cat. “Does it ever return to its own home?”

 

“Hey, now,” McCree says, as though the cat were hurt and not staring lordly and impassive down at Hanzo. “This town’s big enough for the three of us.”

 

Hanzo has no dignified answer to that. He turns back to his work. “You will need to determine what of my research is usable and what is not.”

 

“Will do. Tonight,” McCree says, lackadaisical. “Meantime, we got an interrogation to prepare for.”

 

They get ready for a hike. McCree cuts up fruit and nuts and wraps them in beeswax paper, and bottles a truly shocking amount of water. Hanzo riffles through the laundry and the closets for boots and sunscreen, and on a second thought takes the travel pack from the first aid kit just in case. Most of the websites he perused had emphasized the lethality of New Mexican wildlife. McCree unearths a rucksack and Hanzo stuffs it with their cache. They climb back in the truck only after McCree has left out scraps for Reylito.

 

Like the way to the library, the drive to Bandelier Monument is not long. Hanzo winds the truck through more red-bellied, yellow-dusted canyons, walls of permian rock dusted with ash-flow tuff; he keeps the bulk of his attention on the serpentine roads but his eyes wander over the rugged landscape at every opportunity. When they turn into the monument’s gravel parking lot, the Campbells are standing by their car waiting for them.

 

“Hello, dears,” Mrs. Gloria says, kissing McCree’s face and then, before he can defend himself, Hanzo’s face too. Mrs. Cathy kisses the opposite cheek.

 

“Just a simple trail today, boys,” she announces. They wave away Joel and Hiro’s attempts to pay the park free and hand Hanzo a holomap. Then their troupe proceeds toward what appears to be the Main Loop.

 

Their footsteps kick up dry, ruddy sand as they follow the path stomped through the scrubby brush along the flat of the rock corridor they’re in. Though the sun is tipping toward the west, it is still bright enough to make Hanzo’s sunscreen tacky on his forehead and prompt him to pull water from the rucksack.

 

“Great idea,” McCree says after Hanzo takes a drink, so Hanzo holds the bottle out to him. McCree’s throat works around a few gulps before he hands it back, brushing their fingers together deliberately as he does.

 

The Campbells seem to take it as the sign to start the assault. “How do you like it here so far, Hiro?” Mrs. Gloria asks.

 

“I am enjoying myself,” Hanzo responds, not exaggerating much. “The food and land are lovely, and the people more so.” This time the flash of his dimples has the expected effect.

 

“Oh, he’s a charmer too!” Mrs. Gloria exclaims. Hanzo doesn’t resist when she takes his elbow. “You and Joel make a deadly duo.”

 

Hanzo is amused for reasons she is unaware of. “We have heard that before.”

 

“Just how did you two meet?” Mrs. Cathy asks. “Don’t tell me you’re an avid Morricone reader, Hiro.”

 

“I was following a story in Tokyo,” McCree jumps in. “Ended up at a natural history museum where Hiro was hosting a seminar.” He looks over at Hanzo with an extraordinary glint in his eyes. “Didn’t follow a word of it but he had my full attention. Couldn’t help going up afterward and asking him to a drink.”

 

It is true that McCree’s first words to Hanzo after Genji’s brief introductions had been an invitation to booze. “I declined,” Hanzo supplies. That is true too—he thought his brother had sent his friend to persuade Hanzo to attend the monthly mixer in the base’s abandoned optics lab.

 

“At first,” McCree says over the Campbells’ laughter. “But I’m a stubborn bastard. As you can see, he came around.”

 

Once McCree had explained that he was referring to a leftover stash in an unused secondary barracks, Hanzo had indeed come around. The first time he accepted the offer had been because his gourd was nearly dry. The times after that, because McCree had proven to be a maverick among the masses.

 

The Campbells pummel them with a barrage of questions as they follow the trail: how long since that drink, how much time between reunions, which friends and family have heard. They are almost giddy when they learn they are the first to know. Joel and Hiro take turns under the volley until they reach the trail’s main sights.

 

“This here is the Big Kiva,” McCree tells Hanzo at the edge of a broad pit walled with stacked rock. “A gathering place.” The Campbells go up to the edge, minding the sign forbidding entry, but McCree hangs back. He confesses, “I like to look from right here.”

 

Hanzo’s arm has been buzzing since they approached the monument, but here the dragons throb hard under his skin, like they did when he used to visit the ancient, dried riverbed where the first Shimada earned his spirit. Peering at McCree, he decides to keep a thoughtful distance as well.

 

They pass a thin-grassed meadow lined with flowering cacti where the ruins of some great house lie in a honeycomb of fallen stone. “Tyuonyi,” McCree informs him. His mouth wraps easily around the language. “I been here once when I was young—I liked to imagine what it looked like before it fell.”

 

“Ingenious work,” Mrs. Cathy adds. The Campbells are, for the first time since Hanzo has known them, distracted. Hanzo can’t figure out why it seems like a test until Mrs. Gloria trades Hanzo’s arm for her wife’s and they walk a little further up the path, leaving them pointedly behind.

 

They pass into the shadow of a cliff wall that stretches up into the flat top of yet another mesa. At its bottom the rock is perforated by the holes of what used to be the doors and windows of a mansion built into the talcum itself. In the shade Hanzo reaches over his shoulder and pulls out the sopapilla he snuck into the snacks.

 

“If you forfeit any claim to the cake,” he says imperiously, holding it out to McCree, “you may have this one.”

 

McCree laughs hard enough to startle a lizard from the nearest bush. Outside of team training and field combat, Hanzo has never heard him so loud. The Campbells glance back, intrigued, but McCree seems hardly aware of them.

 

“That’s generous,” he manages to choke out. “I accept your terms.”

 

He leans in to take a bite from Hanzo’s hand. He has to bend to do so, his cowlick brushing Hanzo’s chin. Without the cigarillo stink, he smells like sweat and sap. The honey smeared on his mouth gleams.

 

“Don’t waste it,” Hanzo warns, passing a hand reflexively over his own lips. “You will not get the other.”

 

McCree doesn’t respond, mouth full and sticky, but instead knocks their shoulders together, falling into step with him. The last time Hanzo had McCree’s bulk pressed so close to his side was when he winded and concussed himself jumping from a falling building onto a nearby rooftop; McCree had had to drag his limp, wheezing body to cover, tucked into his armpit. This way is not nearly as objectionable.

 

As they walk the mansion is gradually replaced by a hive of cavates, little apartments in the rock, some of which are accessible by old-fashioned wooden ladders. When they pass the first, Mrs. Gloria stops their troupe and claps her hands. “Let’s get a photo of you, dear,” she tells Hanzo. “For posterity.”

 

McCree pulls away to step in front of Hanzo a little. “Hey now. We agreed,” he reminds her. “No paparazzi stuff.”

 

“Not for us,” Mrs. Cathy says, patting his hand smugly. “For you!” 

 

McCree stalls, no ready answer to that. 

 

“Why don’t you climb up?” Mrs. Gloria shoos Hanzo toward the rock.

 

He hasn’t taken a photo since registering in Athena’s database—he doesn’t count Agent Song’s blurred attempts to get him in her private vlog—and hasn’t posed for many years before that. “Would you not rather have a picture of the both of you?”

 

His charisma has a short half-life apparently. “Nonsense,” Mrs. Gloria says firmly. “We’ve got plenty. Now sit up on the ledge there, you'll look darling.”

 

Obedience is the path of least resistance; Hanzo goes up the ladder to the first cavate. The wood is of course no genuine relic, but it is traditional, its rungs lashed with rawhide. It holds his weight as he hauls himself up to the hollow’s little opening.

 

The inside of the dwelling is bigger than he expected. There are shelves carved into the walls and doors chiseled between rooms, and the ceiling has been layered in soot to keep the powdery volcanic rock from crumbling and seeping grit. The dragons don’t respond to this place but he can feel its certain, earthy presence anyway.

 

He scoots until he’s seated at the lip of the entrance, his legs dangling on either side of the ladder, his palms scraped by the cavate floor. He can’t see well through the setting sun, so he listens to the rustle of the Campbells bullying McCree into pulling out his phone.

 

“Ready, Hiro?” he asks, resigned. At Hanzo’s nod, he starts a countdown.

 

Hanzo remembers the chronology of family pictures that his mother had assembled shortly before her death. They spanned his parents' marriage to his and Genji's majority, his mother's the only placid face in any of them. She had hated the Shimada stare, inherited from their paternal grandfather—even Genji, who otherwise took the most outrageous photos he could manage, looked serious in any portrait with Sojiro.

 

When McCree hits one, Hanzo smiles.

 

He knows that his fangs must be showing, the only feature of his mother’s to best the relentless Shimada genes. He may be a little pink underneath his sunscreen if the slight tingle in his cheeks is any indication, but the way the Campbells coo lets him know the photo comes out handsomely.

 

When he starts to descend the ladder, he finds McCree there holding out a chivalrous hand. He huffs but takes the help getting back to the ground. When his feet hit the dirt, however, McCree doesn’t let go.

 

“Little rough in there?” he asks, examining the red, sanded skin at the heel of Hanzo’s palms.

 

Hanzo had hardly noticed. “It was worth it,” he says. He realizes that he is glad for the chance to see the cliff dwelling. “This place is beautiful.”

 

McCree rubs a finger along his skin to clear it of the cave dust. “Sure is,” he agrees, looking at Hanzo.

 

With the same bold suddenness of his touch at the small of Hanzo’s back, McCree twines their fingers together, their calluses catching. His sweaty palm makes Hanzo’s sting. Hanzo stifles a dozen different reflexes and lets himself be pulled back to the Campbells, who look like cats gorged on cream—they ask no more questions for the rest of the hike.

 

On the walk back to the truck, McCree brings his face close. "Thanks for tagging along," he says lowly, his breath puffing cool against Hanzo's jaw. He sounds genuine, talking not just to Hiro.

 

Hanzo's left arm is numb with the dragons' brooding. "Bring me another cake," he answers as lowly, "and we will be even."

 

McCree squints through the light at Hanzo's back and chuckles. The sun turns his new beard fiery and deepens the lines around his eyes and mouth. He leads Hanzo by the fingers to the driver's side.

 

The tops of Hanzo's ears feel hot, probably sunburned. He passes his free hand over them before climbing into the truck.


	3. Anise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the wait! Thank you all for your patience and kind words in the meantime.

Something wakes Hanzo in the middle of the night. He sits up in bed with a hand around his knife, leaning toward the window where diffuse moonlight rolls into the room like a fog. He determines that he is alone at the same time he notices the scrabbling on the outside wall of the bedroom, just beneath the window sill.

 

By the time he manages to clamp his braces around his atrophied calves, the scrabbling escalates to a frantic scratching. He grits his teeth around the electric pain of the neural connection and then scales the bookcase under the window to spy outside.

 

He spots two familiar paws claws-deep in the wood under the pane—it’s the cat, trying to pull itself into the ledge. Hanzo sighs, briefly considers getting back in bed, and reaches up to undo the latch at the peak of the half-moon frame.

 

Not a moment after he tugs Reylito up by the scruff, the jaws of some animal snap around the air where the cat just hung.

 

Hanzo shoves the window shut on instinct, nearly shattering the glass. Through the pane he sees a hunched, lanky canine dart into the shadow of a tree by the casita, too stringy and predatory to be a dog. Its eyes gleam yellow in the dark as it stares over its bony shoulder.

 

Hanzo stares back at it, brows pulled down, dragons yawning in his left arm. The animal turns and disappears into the night.

 

Reylito moans low and forlorn, a horrible noise, so Hanzo drops to the floor and sets it down. It immediately scrambles under the bed, its claws pilling the carpet underneath the mattress. Hanzo stoops and spies the cat’s dilated, iridescent eyes tucked between the frame leg and nightstand.

 

“Lucky beast,” he rasps in his own tongue. The cat makes that ugly moan again. “You could be meat and shit right now. Show some gratitude.”

 

When Reylito makes no further movement or racket, Hanzo climbs back into bed. No sooner does he set his braces on the floor than McCree knocks on the door—Hanzo tosses the blankets over his legs out of habit, though McCree has seen him bare before.

 

He clears his throat. “What?”

 

“Heard some tussling in here,” McCree calls through the wood. “Somebody break in?”

 

“Only the town pet,” Hanzo replies, dredging up the English. “Running from trouble.”

 

“Four-legged trouble?” McCree asks grimly. “I guess it’s that season.” There’s a pause. “You both alright?”

 

“Tired,” Hanzo says pointedly.

 

“Loud and clear,” McCree huffs, amused. “Just holler if the song dogs get in.” He knocks once more on the doorframe before the hall falls silent. There are no footsteps leading away from the door but Hanzo knows by the relaxation in his left arm that McCree is gone.

 

It’s difficult to fall back asleep. Hanzo adjusts the knife under his head a few times before the shape of his pillow feels right; he closes his eyes stubbornly and counts the seconds until the vision of yellow eyes bleeds into the golden memory of his mother’s tattoo, not serpentine like his father’s and brother’s but fanged in its own way.

 

He wakes again when a furred tail flicks his nose. He cranes his neck to see Reylito hunched above his head, kneading his hair. He stares at the cat’s slitted eyes, taken aback; he hadn’t even felt it climb the mattress. 

 

“No,” he grumbles. The cat blinks at him. “Get down.”

 

Apparently his refusal means permission. Reylito scoots closer and curls up on the free slope of his pillow, cold nose tucked behind his ear and warm belly pressed to the top of his head. The motor of its purr sputters and then rumbles on.

 

Hanzo debates the merits of tossing the cat down the hall where McCree is surely wide awake and wiling away the night. Eventually he decides that retrieving his braces again is too much effort.

 

“Piss on me and there will be consequences,” he warns, closing his eyes and restarting his count.

 

The cat’s heat and purr at his crown are strangely soporific. He drifts off before he can resume his count.

 

=

 

In the morning Hanzo wakes up when he means to, when the light in the bedroom is still purple with the promise of sunrise. He has his pillow to himself; Reylito has relocated to the top of one of the room’s monitors, leeching the screen’s staticky heat in a peculiar little squat with its limbs and tail tucked under itself. 

 

Hanzo sniffs at his hair and smells only the spice of the soap he found in the shower. “Good,” he tells the cat in Japanese. “You’ll live another day.”

 

He receives a slow blink in response.

 

Bracing himself for the chill, Hanzo pulls back the bedding and begins his morning routine. First he spends several minutes massaging his lower legs from his knees to his thin ankles, stimulating the wasted muscles; then he puts on the braces and alternates between dorsiflexion and plantar flexion. After that he drops to the floor and does different permutations of planks until he’s sweaty along his hairline and shaking in his core.

 

He passes the rest of the glowing hour before dawn proper performing kata from the syllabus his kenjutsu instructors had wrung him and Genji through decades ago. Some of the other monitors on the bookshelves flicker in his periphery; he sneaks glances at the casita grounds between movements, checking for more glowing coyote eyes. 

 

Halfway through his stances the sweet aroma of something baking seeps through the crack under the door. Reylito stretches and jumps down from his perch, trotting over; Hanzo intends to ignore it lifting on hind-legs to bat at the doorknob, but his belly cramps around a growl so insistent that he ends his warmup after the next sequence, searching for pants.

 

Reylito darts down the hall the moment he opens the door. Hanzo follows it into the kitchen where McCree is pulling a sheet from the oven using the apron knotted around his waist.

 

“Ease up, papi,” he says, toeing Reylito away from the oven door and setting the sheet down on the stove. “These ain’t for you.”

 

He drops the apron and turns to Hanzo, patting the heat out of his palms. He’s trimmed again and his bifocals are back, but the look on his face is very much like the one he had worn on the ride back to the casita from Bandelier, after he had released his hold on Hanzo to climb into the truck himself.

 

“Any more visitors?” he asks, looking at Hanzo’s sweaty face and bare arms, probably checking for marks of the scuffle he heard hours before.

 

“None,” Hanzo says, rubbing the redness of exertion out of his cheeks and throat. His faint sunburn stings under his fingers. “It seems your perimeter only accounts for some trespassers.”

 

McCree tugs off the apron and hangs it on a rooster-fashioned metal peg. He shrugs. “This is coyote country. It’s illegal to be anything but neighborly.”

 

“That mutt was hardly _neighborly_ ,” Hanzo mutters, watching Reylito duck McCree’s metal hand and try to climb the counter.

 

“Aw. You do care,” McCree beams, clearly enjoying Hanzo’s scowl. “Must be hungry after all that excitement last night. There’s breakfast on the table.”

 

Hanzo ignores that in favor of rising on his toes to peek over McCree’s shoulder at the stove. It looks like cookies on the baking sheet. “What did you make?”

 

“Biscochitos,” McCree says. He gestures behind him to the ingredients still on the counter: lard, eggs, powders, cinnamon, zest, a surprising bottle of brandy. “Got the recipe from a nun one time I ran away to a monastery—gotta confess I’ve tweaked it a little. It’s really a holiday thing, but I had a craving.” He points to a molcajete dusted with crushed seeds. “The anise is what does it.”

 

“This is a dessert?” Hanzo asks, intrigued.

 

McCree presses his lips into a line, like he’s holding back a smile. “Sure it is. They’ll probably be cool enough after breakfast.”

 

Hanzo cuts his eyes at him but goes to the table and uncovers a plate of what looks like chorizo stuffed into a bulging tortilla. He tucks into the breakfast burrito with one eye on the stove. McCree brings over water for them both, sinks into the chair beside him, and does the same.

 

They share a tablet as they eat. Last night after their hike McCree had combed through Hanzo’s draft routes, eliminating all but two in the time it took Hanzo to excavate a canister of aloe and spray the worst of his sunburn. He had seemed impressed by Hanzo’s work.

 

“It’s like you read my mind,” he said. “Didn’t even send you my notes.”

 

“I saw them before we left for the library,” Hanzo said dismissively.

 

McCree had put down the printed papers. “Just the once?” At Hanzo’s nod, he guessed, “Photographic memory? That ain’t fair.”

 

Hanzo had looked away. The truth was that Genji had pulled the longer straw—his memory was truly eidetic, like their mother’s. His scholastic performance had always been weak, sacrificed for social pursuits, but his diagnostic test results were phenomenal, and not because of their father’s money. With a fraction of Hanzo’s ethic, Genji could have easily outshone him. It was an old thought that brought Hanzo nothing but resentment whenever he lingered on it.

 

He and McCree had been unable to narrow down the remaining routes by duration, availability of old-fashioned gas, vulnerability to ambush, or the potential of interference from subsidiary gangs, and so had submitted both to Athena for consideration. She required access to orbital cameras to monitor and extrapolate thermal and bio-activity in the regions of interest, and had requested that they standby while she uplinked and saved a cache for analysis. McCree flicks from the spinning chevron of her loading icon to a patchwork of satellite images that updates patchily in front of Hanzo’s eyes.

 

He frowns, slowly cottoning on. “This is your feed?” McCree freezes like he’s been caught. “You own a satellite?”

 

McCree is sheepish. “Best to say I’m borrowing it.”

 

Hanzo can’t think of whose feed they could be appropriating off the top of his head, but McCree’s hangdog look suggests it must someone that Winston would not approve of. 

 

“It’s from last century,” McCree adds, “so it’s a low-orbit piece of trash next to Athena. But it’s good for triple-checking if you got time on your hands. It’s been my security blanket these last few years. A damn handy little secret.”

 

Hanzo is about to ask before he remembers the dates in McCree’s restricted file. He takes their bulldozed plates to the sink instead and hovers around the stove where the biscochitos are no longer given off steam. “I will keep your secret,” he says, “if you will share your blanket.”

 

McCree’s face contorts with something Hanzo can’t name before his scarred eyebrow peaks in shocked amusement. “Hold the line—was that a bit of blackmailing just now?”

 

“The fee for my silence is not high,” Hanzo says, testing the cookie sheet. It’s cool enough to touch. “Only a tithe.” He taps a cookie meaningfully.

 

McCree laughs like he had at Bandelier, loud enough to make Reylito scurry out of the kitchen. “Goddamn yakuza,” he says. His smile pulls at a scar cutting through the corner of his wide mouth, directly underneath his split brow and only visible now that he’s shaved again.

 

“The first of every month,” Hanzo informs him, bringing the cookie to his mouth. It crumbles sweetly on his tongue, tingling at the same time with spices. He can see why it is a holiday staple, and also why McCree would make some out of season. He finishes it in three bites.

 

McCree grins at him without seeming to know that he’s still grinning. “Every month? Don’t nobody like anise that much.”

 

“Excuses do not pay debts,” Hanzo says, bringing four more biscochitos back to the table. 

 

McCree snorts when Hanzo only hands him one of the cookies. “You know, I meant to bring these on the road with us.”

 

Hanzo swallows his second cookie and licks sugar from his lips. “That is why I am rationing you.”

 

McCree puts his metal hand over his eyes and half-chuckles, half-groans something in a language that doesn’t sound like Spanish. His voice is deeper than usual, a similar rumble to the day before.

 

Hanzo’s sunburn starts tingling, likely in need of another spray. He dusts his hands of crumbs and says, “We should use this time to gather what we will need.”

 

“Sounds like a plan,” McCree says, lifting his glasses so he can rub the smile out of his cheeks. “I usually take my business down to White Rock.” He gets up from his chair in a crack of bones and takes their dishes to the sink. “Got a friend there who keeps real sweet prices for me. We can get in and out before Athena gives us the green.”

 

“Fine,” Hanzo says, getting up as well to find the aloe again. “I will get ready.”

 

To his surprise, Reylito falls into step with him on his way to the bathroom, jumping onto the counter to watch him spray his pink skin. It fixes him with one of its princely glares and flicks his belly with the end of its tail.

 

“Give up the act, coward,” Hanzo tells it in Japanese. “You don’t fool me.”

 

Reylito blinks but remains otherwise smug. Its ears flick every time Hanzo depresses the canister’s nozzle, yellow eyes following the aloe cloud lazily.

 

Hanzo huffs and keeps spraying.

 

=

 

White Rock is even smaller than Los Alamos, less a town unto itself than another ventricle in the heart of human settlement beating in the northern New Mexican mountains. When they turn onto its main street, Hanzo sees the eponymous rock: a large, eroded boulder at the crossroads, not exactly white but scribbled and spray-painted with any number of words and symbols.

 

“They dress it up for occasions,” McCree explains, tapping his thumb on the window. “Anyone with permission can tag it.”

 

They drive past the rock and turn down a series of house-crowded streets that Hanzo can only keep straight by the way the names alternate between English, Spanish, and a hodgepodge of indigenous languages. All of the houses are quaint, desert-worn structures that look as though they have been squatting on their dusty lawns for the past century and a half.

 

McCree confirms, “Used to be a bedroom town for the folks who worked at the Lab. It emptied out a while before the Crisis, but folks came back in droves to escape the guns. Funny, there’s more people here today than when the Lab was really running.”

 

The hot sun overhead, already out in force despite their early start, bakes the air over the town dry and sleepy. Hanzo is glad to finally pull into the parking lot that McCree indicates and park in the shade of a giant needle-branched tree.

 

They walk across the gravel to a little ramshackle hut of a store. There are boxes of clothing, furniture, gadgetry, and miscellaneous articles crowding its awning; the front door is almost blocked by an armoire taller than Hanzo. The peeling paint of the store’s handworked sign announces it as a thrift store of sorts.

 

“You ever been thrifting?” McCree asks, taking up Hanzo’s hand as he had by the cavates.

 

Prior to his exile, Hanzo had patronized the same set of shops as his father and his grandfather before him; on the run, he had adapted to the new need for frugality by scavenging what he needed from the assassins who failed to bring his head back to Hanamura. 

 

“Never,” he says, ignoring the way his palm tingles again though he dressed his scrapes last night. McCree’s burred and callused hand in his no longer trips the alarm of his instincts; it takes less effort than yesterday to walk naturally up to the store. According to McCree, Joel isn’t quite so popular here, but he keeps Hiro close just in case the Campbells are keeping tabs.

 

“First time for everything,” McCree announces. “You can take a look around the shop while I’m getting what we need.”

 

Hanzo would rather be back at the casita monitoring Athena’s progress, but Hiro had agreed to follow Joel through the full, quaint Jemez experience. “Where will you be?”

 

“In the back.” McCree uses his grip to usher Hanzo through the door ahead of him. His expression is wry. “Hold onto anything that catches your eye. Whatever you like is on me.”

 

Hanzo rolls his eyes. “How generous.”

 

The inside of the store is like the inside of a beehive—there are people milling everywhere, mostly elderly folk shuffling arm-in-arm and young mothers toting babies, all hauling armfuls of wares from the shop’s racks and shelves and hooks up to the register.The tight space buzzes with loud haggling and decades-old tunes from the single scratchy speaker. The only cashier sits behind a huge glass-front counter filled with jewelry. There are children playing underfoot, hiding and seeking between aisles, and Hanzo can smell a dog somewhere.

 

For a moment he is reminded of the bustling sea market at the bottom of Hanamura’s steep slope, where he used to rendezvous with the only two friends he ever made that weren’t cousins bred to be his and Genii’s companions. But this place is pungent with piñon incense instead of fish guts and the floor is slippery with sand instead of watery fish blood; it’s far removed from home, even if the old biddies titter over prices the same.

 

“Do not take long,” he starts to say, but McCree is already weaving through the throng.

 

Hanzo glances around the store. There are tall bars bearing heavy racks of old clothing, and a maze of shelves groaning under a collection of all manner of devices. A doorway beside the cashier leads to a second large room overflowing with wooden and metal-wrought antiques. This bare semblance of organization is strained by the sheer volume of _stuff_ , and the cram of customers through it all.

 

In his youth Hanzo used to visit boutiques offering couture hundreds of times more valuable than everything here combined, one of which had catered exclusively to those with Shimada blood. As a young man he had once paid more money for a single suit than had likely passed through this store’s cash box in years. He goes to the closest rack and starts rifling through it with a sigh.

 

He decides almost immediately that New Mexican fashion is odd, or at least its northern strain. Most of the men’s tops are either ironed with ironic patches of little green men or made for ranching despite the fact that Hanzo has yet to see a pasture here. There are one too many psychedelic sweaters and a handful of graphic tees so esoteric that he is tempted on principle, but he leaves for the bottoms hoping that the sample he has seen has been donated for a reason and is not representative of local trends. Familiarity with McCree makes that hope frail.

 

The pants are a similar story. Hanzo rifles through an uncomfortable number of chaps, pauses to admire a truly ugly set of sequined overalls that have no doubt been misracked, and nearly passes an unobtrusive pair of cargo pants until his attention snags on a metallic glimmer.

 

He pulls the pants from their bar, frowning at the zippers crossing the drab blue cloth. He prefers his pants this baggy when he wears his braces, but the color is poor against his jacket; he is about to hang the pants again when he flips them and sees the winding gold pattern slithering down the seat.

 

It’s an eastern dragon, terribly out of place amongst the other incomprehensible alien designs. The scales on its body have the faintest texture, and ripple like velvet under his touch. Hanzo stares it for a long time before grunting in resignation and tucking the pants under his arm.

 

He wanders from there into the ceramics, where he finds the most impressive dichotomy of quality he has ever encountered in one place. There are vintage Venetian urns directly next to teacups painted to look like small clowns, a watering pot fashioned after a swan next to two elven paperweights in a highly suggestive embrace. The lack of rhyme and reason to the racking only polarizes the effect. Hanzo decides that this is where McCree found the rooster decor for his kitchen.

 

As he sidesteps other thrifters, he spies a beautifully molded and fired little pear cactus, small and fragile in its watercolored pot. For some reason it reminds Hanzo of honey and sopapilla—he steps in to pick it up and maybe add it to the jeans, dropping his eyes at the last second. He is magnetized instead by an old teapot one shelf down, pulled down to his knees for a closer look. It has the Big Dipper poked into its pale blue ceramic. This he hefts into his elbow and straightens up with. 

 

He notices suddenly that the shrieking of children and someone’s aggressive perfume has given him a headache. He is considering the best place to wait in the crowded thrift store when McCree appears at his elbow with a bulging backpack slung over his shoulder, a radio leaking wires tucked under his arm, and a large box dangling from the metal fingers of his prosthetic.

 

“Shall we?” he asks, blinking at Hanzo’s finds.

 

“Please,” Hanzo agrees. He places the pants and teapot on top of the box and, right as McCree makes an indignant noise, takes the whole thing from him. It’s ludicrously heavy, recognizable to Hanzo purely by weight as the kind of equipment they will need to make their way through occupied territory, but he shoulders it with a muttered curse.

 

McCree stares. “Anything else?”

 

Hanzo quirks a brow. “This of course,” he says drily, nodding at an umbrella stand in the shape of a cowboy boot. “For the hallway.”

 

McCree’s scarred mouth perks. “Har har,” he says. “Let’s check out.”

 

The cashier greets Joel, ignores the backpack and box that McCree did not enter with, and rings up the rest. Hanzo feels foolish as soon as the money leaves McCree’s hands, but McCree doesn’t seem to mind carrying his new things out for him.

 

They squeeze through the rest of the line and push their way outside. Hanzo hadn’t thought he would be grateful for the hot, sap-scented air, but after the sweaty closeness of the store he has a new appreciation for the scorched New Mexican midday.

 

“Huh. Found something on your first try,” McCree muses as he leads them across the parking lot, their free hands linked again. “Didn’t think there’d be anything to your liking.”

 

Hanzo drops his fingers, sucking his teeth. “Is that why you offered to pay?”

 

McCree laughs and tries to join their grip again, laughing more when Hanzo crosses his arms around the box. “Not at all. Just thought you might be too hoity-toity for anything in there.”

 

That hasn’t been true in many years. McCree should have guessed so—in the last few months he has seen Hanzo wear a secondhand tracksuit for a surveillance job in a dog park and drink moonshine made in an old fuel cartridge in one of the base’s sub levels. Hanzo gives him a look.

 

At the truck, McCree pulls down the bed door so they can secure the backpack and box on the bed. “Thrifting is like treasure hunting,” he says sagely. “Sometimes you hit gold, sometimes just sand.” He opens the cabin and sets the bag down on Hanzo’s seat. “Guess you’ve got a good eye.”

 

Hanzo lifts his chin. “I have proven that many times over.”

 

McCree gives him the new smile; Hanzo realizes that it’s the scar making it crooked.

 

He scowls in response, memory suddenly sparked. “I left something in the store,” he says. “I will be back shortly.”

 

McCree waves him off with a hum and rifles around the truck while Hanzo returns to the thrift store. True to his word, he only takes a moment to retrieve his things. McCree is engrossed in his phone when he reaches him.

 

“Athena ain’t done,” he says when Hanzo is in earshot. “Says she needs a few more hours.”

 

Hanzo had expected some sort of delay; their preparations had been going too smoothly otherwise. “Of course.”

 

McCree’s scar twitches. “How do you feel about fairs?”

 

It takes a moment before Hanzo realizes he is talking about the festival variety. “…What is the occasion?”

 

“State fair’s coming up soon—folks here started putting on a little local show for those that can’t make it down to Albuquerque.” McCree wiggles his eyebrows. “Games and sweets. What more can you ask?”

 

Hanzo has never seen him so puckish. Back in Gibraltar, McCree alternates between keeping his chin down in the hallways and flashing brief, disarming grins in the briefing room. It strikes Hanzo again how different a man he is here in the piñon.

 

Hanzo hasn’t smiled in Hanamura in over a decade; he can’t relate.

 

He considers the supplies in the trunk as well as the time remaining on Athena’s analysis. At length he supposes the day out and about in Los Alamos hadn’t been so objectionable. “What kind of sweets?”

 

=

 

They park the truck, hooded with a inconspicuous tarp, in a lot surrounded by more green than Hanzo has seen since they left the Rock. Grassy fields stretch outward on either side of the dusty road they took here from the store, interrupted only by a kaleidoscope of tents and pavilions dressed in the state colors and bright streaks of local turquoise. Hanging above the grounds is a hot air balloon emblazoned with a Zia sun. The entire fair is cradled between the crags in the rugged breast of the land, making it look like the festivities emerged straight from the folds in the rock.

 

“This is Overlook,” McCree announces, making a sweeping gesture across the park. Just at a glance, Hanzo can see a rickety carousel, a queue of game booths, a dizzying number of food trucks and ice cream coolers, and even a little petting zoo. Crowds of people, more than he thought this town had, mill between stalls. Over everything hangs the spicy smell of roasting green chiles. “Where should we start?”

 

Hanzo is suddenly hungry again. He starts following his nose to the nearest grill before he remembers himself. Hiro goes back to take up Joel’s hand and they enter the fair together.

 

They sample all the food first, an ambitious feat that takes them an hour and leaves them both hobbling through the crowds, too full. Hanzo had gotten them a few skinny taquitos from the first truck they saw, just to hold them over until they got home, but McCree had insisted they also split a green chile cheeseburger from the next stand. Then they had stumbled upon some chicharrones, and then sopapillas filled with clover honey, and then bean chalupas, and then fried alligator, and then arroz dulce. By that time they realized they had patronized almost all of the small fair’s food vendors and it became a matter of principle to finish the lineup.

 

“Worth the ache,” McCree says, wincing as he leans between the lanes of people to recycle the cups from their pudding. “Just gotta walk it off.”

 

“Competition is the best medicine,” Hanzo disagrees. Reminding himself that he has walked off worse, he forces his shoulders back and strides toward an alley of booths.

 

He can hear the smirk and surprise in McCree’s voice as he follows. “If you insist.”

 

It’s been longer than Hanzo can remember that he last played a fair game. He has no genuine interest in doing so now, but on their way in he spied local law enforcement making lazy rounds around the festivities. They’re both still bountied men; it’s better that they blend in with the other families.

 

He steps over a gaggle of children and stops at the closest booth with adults in its line, a shooting game with a cork gun and its back panel lined with little targets. McCree sidles up beside him in line and raises his eyebrows.

 

“Guns, huh?” he asks.

 

Hanzo had assumed he would have appreciated the choice. “Do you object?”

 

“I thought you wanted a competition,” McCree says innocently. “Looks here like you want to lose straightaway.”

 

Hanzo, not that far removed from brotherhood, elbows him lightly in the gut.

 

“Unsportsmanlike,” McCree gasps, doubling over without losing his pug grin.

 

“Only the inferior need to taunt their opponents,” Hanzo says, crossing his arms.

 

McCree looks incredulous. “Then what’s all that mid-mission chatter in my comm?”

 

Hanzo gives him a long blink. “It is not a taunt if it is true.”

 

McCree’s wheezes eventually turn into proper laughter; by then the rest of the line has unsuccessfully tried hitting more than five targets with their cork bullets and moved on. It is their turn.

 

“Braggarts first,” Hanzo says archly, waving McCree ahead.

 

McCree puts his metal hand to his ear. “What’s that? Show you how it’s done? Don’t mind if I do.”

 

Hanzo grinds his heel into the grass. None of his experiences with McCree on base—reserved and civil and unexpectant—had hinted to him that McCree in his natural state was almost as insufferable as Genji. Hanzo knuckles the corner of his mouth to keep a straight face.

 

McCree manages to knock down two targets in his first shot to the amazement of the booth attendant. Of the twenty targets on the panel, he gets seventeen, missing on purpose to prevent too much gawking. He salutes Hanzo with the cork gun while the attendants unlocks the prize cage.

 

“I warmed her up for you,” he says, standing aside with his new plush red chile.

 

Hanzo doesn’t like his tone. When the attendant finishes resetting the panel, he takes two steps back to put the booth in focus and knocks the same seventeen targets right back down.

 

“You are too generous,” he replies, declining his prize.

 

McCree accepts it for him, giving him that new smile. “Rematch?”

 

They round a sectioned-off arena for a lasso contest and come up to a booth whose panel has a felt reproduction of a golf course. They take turns swinging a plastic club and trying to putt a Velcro golf ball through the tiny course hole. Both of them fail miserably; Hanzo’s ball hits and sticks to a brown felt hazard. 

 

“I thought you ritzy types did business over golf all the time,” McCree says as they walk, abashed, to the next game.

 

“My family preferred doing business in brothels,” Hanzo corrects. “Better deals and better blackmail.”

 

He hadn’t thought about how that might be received until it was already out of his mouth. McCree only snorts and says, “I just bet. Rematch?”

 

Their tie remains unbroken several games later. McCree, by virtue of his quick draw, briefly pulls ahead in a dart game wherein they rush to pop the most chile-shaped balloons in the shortest time; Hanzo evens the gap in a jumbo-sized jenga game so intense that nearby children shriek when McCree accidentally topples the tower, taller by that point than even Hanzo. As a last resort they wander over to a rubber duck race and pick ducks at random as their champions, giving up when the race’s mini-pool springs a leak.

 

“Guess we’re evenly matched,” McCree says, bumping him with a shoulder.

 

Hanzo bumps him back harder. “You may continue to believe that.” He notices only after McCree directs them toward the little zoo that Joel and Hiro have linked hands again.

 

They watch the pygmy goat show from afar, standing behind a crowd of curious children not much bigger than the goats. Hanzo thinks the distance is best considering his left arm is throbbing hard in McCree’s proximity; most animals respond poorly to his presence even when the dragons are quiescent. For a fanciful moment he wonders if McCree can feel the electricity building under his skin through their shared grip.

 

“I used to own goats,” McCree announces. “Little farm outside of Santa Fe. They’re bastards to raise but they steal your heart anyway.”

 

Hanzo grunts, watching a few children try to reach across the show arena fence to touch a petting goat. Eventually he answers, “I was allowed to own two exotic fish.”

 

McCree chuckles. Hanzo can feel him looking. “Same thing, I’m sure.”

 

The sun is lowering itself to a seat on the mountain ridge to the west, dragging orange and purple through the sky behind it. The stadium lights around the edges of the fair’s field blink on and the torches and tea lights between booths flare up too. Twilight makes the shadows in the roguish creases in McCree’s face deepen.

 

“I could—” he starts to say. Suddenly the muscles in his forearm tighten, tension springing down the long lines of him. His face doesn’t change but Hanzo can feel his taut awareness in their clasped palms as he finishes smoothly, “—go for a drink.”

 

Without giving Hanzo time to react, he steps them expertly between two passing throngs of people and, in the unnoticeable span of a heartbeat, slips them into the narrow space between game booths. Hanzo opens his mouth on a question but McCree manhandles him with palms at his ribs all the way up against the booth wall with enough speed and strength that Hanzo finds his hands flying up to dig into McCree’s kidneys on instinct.

 

“That smarts, _Hiro_ ,” McCree says wryly, smile tight with pain.

 

Hanzo lets go right away. “What is this, _Joel_?”

 

In the spare light of an overhead lantern McCree’s eyes gleam a little red. His voice is a deep rumble again. “Can’t a man steal a little necking on a fine night like this?”

 

Hanzo feels his sunburn pull tight across his cheeks as he frowns, nonplussed; his hands snap up again when McCree takes a bold step forward, but he finally understands when McCree bows his head and leans close.

 

“There’s a plainclothes patrolling,” he breathes by Hanzo’s ear.

 

Hanzo gentles his grip to match the suggestion of McCree’s hold on him. “How do you know?”

 

“Shoes, always.” The words puff against the side of Hanzo’s neck. McCree straightens just enough so he can cross sides to put his mouth near Hanzo’s other ear, blocking both of their faces from outside view.

 

Hanzo scowls at the reminder of McCree’s height. He looks the other way, incidentally exposing his throat to another one of McCree’s sighs. His breath is still sweet from the pudding.

 

“Here for us?” Hanzo asks.

 

“Not likely,” McCree says. “But you can’t be too careful.”

 

One of his big hands releases Hanzo’s waist for his chin—he puts a finger under Hanzo’s beard and turns him back. He has the same sharp quality to him as he had during their escape to the casita; his eyes are hot-coal gleaming now.

 

Hanzo doesn’t appreciate the familiarity until he notices McCree’s gaze flicking to the side; he follows the look until he can see a man with a buzzcut passing by their stolen corner, mumbling into a radio. What little Hanzo can overhear indicates that the man is in pursuit of some juveniles in possession of something they shouldn’t be.

 

“Not us,” he confirms.

 

The sharpness slips off of McCree like a sheet. In the next second he is leaning on the wall of the booth opposite Hanzo, space between them once more. The deepening chill of dusk puts its cool hands where McCree’s had just rested.

 

“False alarm,” McCree says easily.

 

Hanzo crosses his arms, giving each a quick, rough pat to get rid of sudden goosebumps. “You are perhaps even more paranoid than me.”

 

“Kept me alive so far,” McCree shrugs. He looks taller and broader in the dark, more like the terrible specter that his bounties call him—except for his pug mouth, too wide and keen to betray his face as the one on the wanted chips. He tilts his head back out toward the crowd. “Anyway, I was serious about that drink. How about it?”

 

Hanzo’s short-lived adrenaline spike dips. He feels a weight low in his belly, perhaps the coils of his instincts trying to unknot.

 

“Yes,” he agrees immediately, pushing off of the booth wall. He squeezes past McCree back out into the crowd, their chests brushing as he goes. “You are buying.”

 

“That’s fair,” McCree smiles, scar pulling it sideways, and follows.

 

=

 

They get cups of spiked horchata from the grounds’ only bar. The sky fades to a deep purple and some of the games begin to close. Hanzo wonders if the fair is shutting down until McCree finds a blanket from somewhere, takes them to a bare part of the field away from the booths and stands, and stakes out a spot between the other people settling down on the grass.

 

“Last but not least,” McCree groans as he lowers himself on one half of the blanket.

 

From a childhood of fair going, Hanzo knows what’s coming next. Indeed, as he sinks down beside McCree, the first firework whistles up into the air above the fair and bursts in a crackling red star. The field tinkles with the laughing delight of children.

 

It’s followed by another and a third as Hanzo looks critically around and then fits himself into the curve of McCree’s side, posing like the myriad other couples sharing blankets around them. He only realizes that he was getting chilly when McCree’s odd heat seeps through his long sleeve.

 

For one breath McCree is still; Hanzo wonders if he caught him off guard. Then he tells Hanzo, “Could’ve told me if you were cold. They’re selling serapes by the balloon animals.”

 

Hanzo snorts. “You must own twenty already.”

 

McCree’s amused face lights up iridescent with the simultaneous pop of several firecrackers at once. “You can start your own collection.”

 

“I will pass,” Hanzo says, smirking before he can help it. He snaps a hand down to block himself when McCree digs his elbow into his ribs with an indignant _hey_.

 

They watch the fireworks until the smaller pops are exhausted and the big crackers start thundering in the sky. The dragons make helices in the flesh of Hanzo’s arm and squeeze his joints until they twitch, stimulated by the noise and energy making the night waver. He has to put his other hand on the bare grass as a grounding conductor to carry some of their excess power away into the earth. McCree has to notice the way Hanzo buzzes a little against him, but true to his virtue he asks nothing.

 

The colorful, concentric flames eventually become conics and complicated designs, drawing the attention of what remnants of the crowd haven’t yet settled on the field. When most of the fair is enraptured, McCree leans over to whisper at him again.

 

“Done?” he asks, words puffing against Hanzo’s jaw.

 

Hanzo realizes he can feel McCree’s phone shivering, probably with a notification set for Athena’s completion. “Done.”

 

They sneak out of the field while everyone else is looking up. The truck is exactly how they left it, tarp undisturbed, so they buckle up and drive back the way they came. Before they make the turn for the way back to Los Alamos, McCree tells Hanzo to pull into the antique gas station right next to the town’s famous rock.

 

They’re the only customers; most of the other cars Hanzo has seen here are electric. It’s been a long time since he’s pumped gas, so he stands aside while McCree fills them up, glancing between the tank and the rock, trying to make out some of the markings on its side in the dark. He sees a fresh one, paint bleeding, near the top. McCree catches him looking.

 

“I tagged it once when I was young and dumb,” he says, nodding at the rock. “Illicitly, of course. Signed it _Billy the Kid_.”

 

“How original,” Hanzo says.

 

“Alright, Mr. Drip,” McCree huffs good-naturedly. “You do better.” He leaves Hanzo by the truck while he goes inside to pay and buy antacids in repentance for their earlier binge. Hanzo kicks a heel against the station’s asphalt and waits.

 

His eyes catch again on the top of the rock, on the new mark. He traces the line of the running color down with his eyes until he spies a discarded spray can on the ground. He stares at the litter for a full minute before acknowledging the thought that arises in his mind.

 

It’s an impulse worthy of the younger brother he used to know, which once upon a time would have been enough to make him renounce it right away. Hanzo peers through the station windows at McCree to confirm that he is still perusing an aisle for tablets; he shakes his head at himself as he pushes off of the truck and slips out of the yellow circle of the station’s lights. 

 

It’s not difficult to dart over to the rock out of view of the station cameras, simpler than infiltrating the Shimada castle compound under the nose of a full security guard. It only takes a moment—he returns to his former spot just as McCree crosses the asphalt.

 

They reach the truck at the same time. McCree looks at Hanzo, and then at the rock, and then at Hanzo’s hand, which despite his best efforts is a little black from the spray can. When comprehension dawns, his face twists into that new smile, a little disbelieving but wholly thrilled. He doesn’t say anything until they’re back in the truck and on the road.

 

“Never took you for a vandal,” he says, turned in his seat to stare.

 

Hanzo huffs. “I have committed much worse crimes.”

 

“What the hell did you write?” McCree demands, eager.

 

Hanzo doesn’t bother keeping the smugness out of his face. “ _Never second best_.”

 

McCree’s laughter fills the truck cabin along with more glitchy desert static.

 

=

 

Orange light from the chiminea warms the patio. The air is spicy with piñon and cocoa. Beneath his jacket Hanzo is warmer than he was on the first night at the casita, his hands around a mug of more chile hot chocolate and his elbow knocking against McCree’s. The patio chairs have been pulled close to the fire to conserve heat and wood; whenever McCree takes a drink, the tassels of his turquoise serape brush the back of Hanzo’s hand.

 

Reylito is curled up in McCree’s lap again, blinking lazily at Hanzo. Apparently the cat spent the day sleeping safely on top of their roof, though Hanzo isn’t sure how it managed to climb up; he and McCree had both startled when it started screaming at them as they walked up to the casita, refusing to quiet until McCree helped it down from the gutter.

 

“He’ll miss you,” McCree observes. “He took a liking to you, I can tell.”

 

“As he should have,” Hanzo says, sipping. “He owes me his life.”

 

McCree looks vindicated, though Hanzo isn’t sure why. “I’ll let Marisol know to keep him in for a while.”

 

Hanzo looks down at the tablet balanced on his knee, projecting a terrain map of New Mexico bisected by a glowing red line—their route to extraction. According to Athena, their best bet is to cross the state along the most obvious path, where they will be least expected. She has retrieved them from enough close calls that Hanzo can’t statistically question her conclusion, but he zooms into her highlighted cache and analyzes her notes nonetheless.

 

“When are we leaving?” he asks without looking up.

 

“Right after breakfast, I figure,” McCree says. “That way we can catch the rush and hide in traffic.”

 

Hanzo nods. “Fine. What else do we need?”

 

“Nothing,” McCree says. “I already changed the shocks and put the new radio in the truck. Everything is packed—the heat, the water, the tech.” He pauses. “The cookies.”

 

“Then we are ready,” Hanzo says, ignoring the amused look at his side.

 

The chiminea belches a few sparks as a burning log inside falls. More of the hot sap smell wafts out and perfumes the dry air. Hanzo takes a deep breath and it makes his next sip richer. McCree keeps the rim of his mug pressed against his lips, sipping every so often; Hanzo thinks he must badly want a smoke. 

 

“Mrs. Cathy messaged me while we were out,” McCree announces after an easy silence. “She and her wife work fast—showed me their first draft on Joel and Hiro. It’s about what you’d expect.”

 

“I know,” Hanzo says, exhaling through his nose. He had seen the notification on McCree’s phone while he’d been taking another ten minute nap in the armchair.

 

“Yeah?” McCree looks over.

 

“The cat told me,” Hanzo says, dry. 

 

McCree huffs a small laugh, eyes crinkling. “Chismosito,” McCree accuses Reylito, rubbing the cat’s chin.

 

Hanzo finishes his mug, realizing absently that they aren’t likely to have chile hot chocolate again after they leave. He glances up to ask McCree about supplies in southern New Mexico only to find McCree already looking.

 

Hanzo clears his throat. “What?”

 

McCree blinks. “Refill?” he offers, reaching out. 

 

The tassels raise goosebumps again on Hanzo’s skin. He  feels the weight return to his lower belly, though there’s no danger present. He keeps his grip on his cup. “I will come in with you.”

 

That pulls up the scarred corner of McCree’s mouth. “Lead the way.”

 

They both stand, McCree tucking Reylito in his elbow. He gestures Hanzo ahead of him and, when he steps obligingly through the patio door, drops his hand to the small of Hanzo’s back. The contact is muffled by his jacket, but Hanzo still feels the warmth like another fire. 


	4. Don Quixote's Lace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm truly sorry for the unintentional hiatus! Thank you to everyone who left sweet comments despite the long wait :).

Hanzo sits straight up out of sleep when he hears a key jiggling in the front door; by the time he opens his eyes he recognizes the Spanish admonishments that McCree sputters whenever Reylito tries to greet him by scaling his legs. Hanzo lowers his knife, the handle of which he’s used to grasping faster than consciousness, and watches from the couch as McCree toes the cat away with his bad leg and elbows the door closed.

 

He tips an invisible hat at Hanzo with the hand holding a steaming bag. “Thanks for the help, partner.”

 

Hanzo doesn’t look away when a yawn cracks his jaw. “You appear to be handling things.”

 

McCree’s flat look slants into a grin. “I’ll handle your share of the food if you don’t rise and shine.”

 

Snatching the blanket thrown across the couch and coiling himself inside, Hanzo follows McCree and Reylito into the kitchen. McCree spreads his morning haul across the table: tortillas, scrambled eggs, sausage, potatoes, melting cheese, and two vats of chile so strong it razes the hairs in Hanzo’s nose when he pries open the containers.

 

“Build your own burrito,” McCree explains, grabbing glasses for the bottle of guava nectar amidst the food. They tuck into breakfast without bothering with plates.

 

Reylito curls between their legs as they eat. Hanzo holds his burrito with one hand and rubs sleep out of his eyes with the other. They went to bed late enough last night that even McCree looks a little wan, having spent the small hours meticulously cataloging the cargo for their trip and loading it in the truck under the deep cover of mountain darkness. McCree hadn’t protested when Hanzo dropped face first onto the couch after receiving the last satellite transmission from their eye in orbit. He can only assume that McCree took his turn in the bedroom.

 

He’s no longer surprised he didn’t hear McCree leave to fetch food, only that the dragons didn’t wake him with their winding as he went.

 

McCree leans back in his seat after his fourth helping. “Hits the spot,” he sighs. He watches Hanzo over the rim of his glass as he knocks back the last of his nectar, eyes roving down the blanket. “How long until you’re ready?”

 

“Five,” Hanzo says after a bite. He has bundled his things and scrubbed the casita of most evidence of his presence already.

 

“Sure thing, sleeping beauty,” McCree says lightly, raising his split eyebrow.

 

Hanzo gives him a look and tosses his waste on the way to the bathroom, nearly stumbling over Reylito as the cat zooms underfoot. He realizes the moment he gets in front of a mirror what McCree was implying—his bedhead is not a five-minute affair.

 

Ten minutes later, they start stripping the casita. McCree puts away the tchotchkes from the eaves and porch and composts what perishables they aren’t packing for the drive. Hanzo tucks himself into the casita’s small spaces and puts down repellant for the worst of the critters soon to squat once they’re gone. Reylito judges their handiwork from the bench in the foyer.

 

“Shame we can’t linger,” McCree sighs as he digs ash out of the furnace and winches its hatch shut. He rolls a dusty coal between his metal fingers. “I barely touched the anthology.”

 

“That may be for the best,” Hanzo remarks, and dodges the coal suddenly flicked his way.

 

McCree growls at him good-naturedly. “And what all did you get done?”

 

Humming, Hanzo props the couch up with a shoulder and places a repellant field in the gap between the back and the wall. Perhaps carried along by the nostalgia wrapped like another serape around this town, he had reproduced what he could remember of his undergraduate thesis—a mere four pages of the sixty he had been editing, erased from his mind by time. It would do in a pinch if Hiro’s work was questioned too closely.

 

“More than you,” he says, grimacing when he realizes he’s channeling his brother.

 

McCree says something dubious in Spanish, eyes on the place where the couch foot digs into the muscle of Hanzo’s shoulder. It’s probably an antique; Hanzo keeps from rolling his eyes and flexes to gently replace the furniture against the wall. McCree drops the little horno in his hand and curses when it shatters on the floor.

 

“You said Joel could juggle,” Hanzo remarks on the way to the kitchen, rifling through the cabinets for a broom and dustpan.

 

“He’s let himself go,” McCree sighs, taking the broom and sweeping up the ceramic pieces.

 

“And yet Hiro remains,” Hanzo says, squatting to put the last field behind the furnace. Eye-level with McCree, he turns to offer the smuggest look he can summon and finds McCree already giving him another one of his new smiles, so wide it pulls his scar pink.

 

“Ain’t Joel a lucky sumbitch,” he says, voice a little rosy.

 

The fading sunburn from yesterday stings the tops of Hanzo’s ears again. “Yes,” he says flatly, taking back the broom and pan and standing back up while McCree laughs until his eyes crinkle.

 

They migrate to the bedroom for the last of their things. McCree has already put his wall of tech on reserve power and secured his feeds; last night he had greenlit the earthwork from the inside while Hanzo made the same circuit he had made upon their arrival and checked it from the outside. The casita should be silent and secure until the next time Joel blows into town.

 

Hanzo goes to his guitar case and triple checks his bow and handgun. His and McCree’s duffels are already in the truck, but paranoia exacerbated by exile has trained Hanzo into keep his weapons on hand always. If all goes well, they won’t need the extra firepower in the truck bed. Hanzo has never counted on all going well.

 

“Food and fire,” McCree sighs esoterically, looking through the half-moon window at the pink dawn haze floating through the ponderosa. Then he flicks the spur on Peacekeeper hidden at his thigh and pushes his glasses up his nose. “Shall we?”

 

Hanzo shoulders his case, glances at the echo of the movement in the bedroom’s tall mirror, and strides toward the door. “We shall.”

 

They cross the driveway to the truck with Reylito chirping behind them, the cat somehow aware of the finality of McCree’s key in the front door lock. Hanzo puts his case in the cabin and then gets in the driver’s seat while McCree scoops up Reylito and says something very softly into the fur of his throat. Reylito butts his forehead against McCree’s jaw in reply.

 

They vault into the passenger’s seat. “Next stop,” McCree says brightly, Reylito expectant in his lap.

 

“The fare,” Hanzo reminds him. McCree groans but reaches an arm back to grab a biscochito from their rations. Hanzo sparks the engine and backs them onto the dusty road, steering with one hand and holding the cookie with the other.

 

They put Reylito on Marisol’s mailbox again. Somehow watching the cat grow small and then eventually disappear between the trees as they rumble down the mountain reminds Hanzo of the time Sojiro had retrieved him and Genji from their grandmother’s estate in Fukuoka the summer before their clan education had begun in earnest.

 

On that vacation their grandmother had confiscated their workbooks and given them free rein of the city—Genji had somehow found an aviary willing to apprentice a child, and Hanzo had gone again and again to the theater where his mother had learned all of her stories. There he had learned the kabuki lines of anger and sadness and cowardice and heroism and demonhood, an education he never would have received in Hanamura. Somehow Sojiro had heard, and his dark car had cut through the rapeseed field around the estate two weeks ahead of schedule. Hanzo had watched his grandmother in the rearview mirror until she was too small to make out among the yellow wolf kites bobbing in front of her mansion.

 

McCree, turned around in his seat and looking back the way they came, says something wry and wistful in Spanish. Hanzo understands the sentiment.

 

They make their way back down from the dusty plateau, out of the cupped hands of the Jemez. The perilous drive on the road clinging to the cliffside is less harrowing the second time; Hanzo drives with one hand on the wheel and the other brushing cinnamon off of his lips. The sun is tall and yellow now, and makes McCree’s eyes burn gold where it comes in through the passenger window.

 

“Here goes nothing,” he croons, and flicks the new radio until it plays some tune from the mountains in the flirty voice of the bajo sexto.

 

Hanzo only realizes he is tapping a finger when they pass the gas station with the petroglyphs, and grabs another cookie to fill his hand.

 

=

 

The drive to Santa Fe from Los Alamos is not long, yet somehow after three hours they are still on the road.

 

Instead of taking the direct, arrowhead route to the capital, McCree insists that they meander a little north, bending back and forth between flat-topped folds in the rock flanked with the land’s squatty, sun-drenched trees. Hanzo, who had punctuality needled into his skin like the dragonclouds down his arm, protests the detour until McCree closes the box of biscochitos. Then he deliberately takes the ravines hard, drifting enough on the loops of the road that the truck squeals a little, the tires tossing up dust. McCree looks more delighted than contrite.

 

They pass through Española, another low brown town that seems to have grown down into the earth rather than up. “Big Sikh population here, though you couldn’t guess it by looking—most diverse in the world,” McCree says educationally. “If you liked Bandelier, you’d like the Puye cliffs.”

 

Hanzo had liked Bandelier, but they stay on the road to a place called Chimayo.

 

Driving in is like going through a graveyard—there are crucifixes bristling on the roadsides, hanging from eaves, nailed to arches and landmarks, hung with rosaries in curtains dangling over candle-piled shrines, poking through the chainlinks in fences. It seems as though every other tall structure is a church. Where there are no crosses, there are plots of wild, brittle grass and set-back homes lining the suggestions of roads. With the exception of an omnic or two walking dry paths with other people, it’s a vision from the century before last.

 

They park in front of an adobe gate with wooden doors open to the church inside, a belled two-story visibly bowing under the weight of its own history. Without thinking Hanzo goes around to McCree’s side and helps him down from the truck the way Hiro has been helping Joel for the past few days. McCree accepts the hand, still chattering.

 

“There ain’t time to do all the good stuff,” he laments. “We didn’t get to see the caldera and we can’t take the High Road the rest of the way to Taos. Damn shame.”

 

Hanzo shrugs, brushing their shoulders. “Some other time,” he assures him, drawn through the gate by curiosity.

 

The courtyard smells like a garden, draped with buntings of blanket flowers and lyreleaf. The number of people milling around the courtyard is surprising. Many are holding vials or small flasks.

 

“We are underprepared,” Hanzo says, digging his elbow questioningly into McCree’s side.

 

McCree sidesteps the prodding and captures Hanzo’s hand, winking. Their calluses catch, latching them together. “We don’t need a souvenir. Just a pinch.”

 

They enter the church proper. Hanzo is surprised by the burst of color within in, sharp after the eroded tans and browns of the outside. The walls are hung with a thousand paintings and triptychs and tapestries in passionate blood and gold and turquoise, too crowded for the eye to linger on, flickering all together in fake motion like a scene projected from the Bible.

 

The nave is full of people kneeling at peeling wooden pews, heads bent in front of a tall reredos gazing back benevolently from above. At first Hanzo thinks that they are going to kneel as well, and tries to remember if he has ever learned a Christian prayer, but McCree takes them through a door to the side into a small space with equally crowded walls, hung with more beads and, astonishingly, countless sets of crutches.

 

“They call this place the Lourdes of America,” McCree explains very, very quietly, breathing the words into the space behind Hanzo’s ear. He points to the pictures and letters tacked around the crutches. “Testimonials. Folks who came to draw from el pocito.”

 

Through another door is an even tinier room, with monks and mothers and messiahs in ceramic and canvas floating in a choir above a wavy stone floor. In the middle is a little pit.

 

“Just a pinch,” McCree whispers, stepping inside.

 

He looks like a stranger once he crosses the threshold, somehow both bashful as a churchboy and familiar as a priest surrounded by the gilded carvings and painted tiles. Hanzo isn’t sure if it’s deliberate or natural, and even less sure how many skins McCree is capable of wearing. He watches, rubbing the back of his ear, as McCree slowly bends down to stick dark hands into the hole and pull up a palm of fine fragrant soil.

 

Hanzo realizes what the vials are for, but McCree just takes the handful and rubs it into his pants above the pucker of scarring where his gunshot wound is closing. His eyes shut and his lips move for long enough that Hanzo notices the height of his cheekbones and the glint of the old cut on his wide mouth, and then he is rolling smoothly back to his feet and pulling Hanzo back through the church the way they came.

 

“That’s refreshing,” he sighs once they’re back in the flowery courtyard air.

 

“Are you done?” Hanzo asks, bewildered.

 

McCree nods. “Let’s get this show back on the road.”

 

Hanzo stares at him, whiplashed by the suddenness, but ultimately refrains from any word on the ritual. He accepts the hand on his lower back pushing him toward the truck, still crumbly with holy earth. Part of him wants to ask what el pocito has added to their getaway, but he isn’t so hypocritical. Once he had loitered seven hours past the end of his vigil on Genji’s anniversary to sneak tea and rice before his mother’s tablet in the Shimada butsudan. Another time, he had obeyed the ache in his left arm and pried up the boards of the castle bellhouse to clap his hands over the well hidden beneath. On some level he understands the detour.

 

“How many more stops will we be making?” Hanzo asks dryly, getting behind the wheel.

 

“Oh, tons,” McCree assures him, buckling in.

 

On the way out they take a road lined with quaint little galleries and shops. Stalled at a redlight, Hanzo glances through the open doors of one and sees several huge looms quivering with the rainbow, thousand-thread beginnings of bright colored cloth. There are people working the traditional wooden frames in front of little crowds, demonstrating technique, braiding fractal and geometric patterns out of slivers of blue and green and metal. McCree leans over the console to follow his gaze and hums.

 

“This was a weaving town in its day,” he says. “Used to be a few families that would pass the looms down each generation.”

 

One of the looms gleams with a thread that looks like a shining vein opened in rock, and Hanzo is abruptly reminded of McCree’s turquoise serape. He has a flash of wordless understanding. At the green light he turns them again toward the south and they wind their way back through the ravines, McCree stretching and folding his bad leg easily in the passenger’s seat.

 

They are minutes away from Pojoaque, the town they had passed coming in, when McCree tilts his head like a dog hearing an inhuman pitch.

 

“Whoa there,” he says, reaching out for Hanzo to stop, putting his arm across Hanzo’s ribs like another belt. Hanzo is sturdier than nearly everyone at the Watchpoint; the utter iron in McCree’s hold catches him off guard.

 

He eases the truck to a stop. “What now?”

 

“Storm’s brewing,” McCree says, ironic.

 

Hanzo glances at the parched blue sky through the truck’s dusty window. “Hardly.” He would have felt the brooding of any clouds in the deep tissue of his arm.

 

“Just wait.” McCree watches the road.

 

There are no other cars in sight in either direction. Hanzo picks at the stitching of the wheel and waits for whatever McCree feels coming.

 

It doesn’t take long. A piece of scrub scuttles across the asphalt in front of the truck, and then another, and then a few tangles of brush, and then a whole tumbleweed like a brown cloud itself scraping the paving. It’s followed by a second, third, and fourth, and then too many to count, and then a full wave of the burrs so deep and tall that the road disappears under the tide.

 

“Tumbleweed crossing,” McCree says like an old joke. “Just gotta let it pass.”

 

“I think I have seen this in a movie,” Hanzo muses.

 

He expects the wave to die down within a few seconds but more and more burrs come bouncing and rolling. He hadn’t known there were so many tumbleweeds in the whole southwest. Eventually he puts the truck in park.

 

“I had heard flash floods were common here, but not this,” he says.

 

“This land’s full of surprises,” McCree says with wistful pride. “Pretty far removed from a Mediterranean getaway, but she’s got her own beauty.”

 

They haven’t spoken about Gibraltar since they debriefed with Winston. He looks twice at McCree’s face as he watches the wave and recognizes the fatigue in it. It occurs to him for the first time that perhaps McCree’s scarcity around the Watchpoint is reluctance, and that he answered the recall not out of purpose but obligation.

 

“Something on my face?” McCree asks good-naturedly.

 

“Will Joel retire here when he is done globetrotting?” Hanzo asks on a whim.

 

It seems like the wrong thing to say. For the first time on this trip, the scar on McCree’s lip pulls downward. “Sure, when Hiro goes back to dragon country.” The words have barely left his mouth before he shakes his head, wincing. “Eh, nevermind.”

 

The implications barely sting Hanzo. He and Genji had exchanged vitriol in comparison when he had first arrived in Gibraltar, when the rush of blood and revelation from their fight and reunion had receded, when they had encountered the reality of sharing the same roof for the first time in a decade.

 

He tsks. “Hiro will surely go somewhere warmer.”

 

McCree looks hangdog and relieved all at once. When the tumbleweeds thin out and finally stop and they pull into Pojoaque, he pays for their whole lunch: carne adovada stewed in red chile and something called the combinación picante, three swollen tamales with posole. Hanzo considers the earlier conversation redacted once the extra, apologetic order of sopapilla is set down on the table.

 

“What is next?” he asks, mouth thick with sugar and honey. Their plan for the day was to drive into Santa Fe for recon, right into the nest of rattlers where neither Deadlock nor Blackwatch would think them stupid enough to go, but part of McCree’s survival success seems to be a healthy spontaneity. He has given up the day to McCree’s nostalgic impulse.

 

Outside the iron-wrought, garlanded fencing around the patio of the farmstead kitchen McCree had recommended, a few loose goats, collared but shepherdless, graze among brittle grass and stare at them with slitted eyes. From the other side of the stead’s tiny orchard comes the priggish crow of peacocks. Hanzo assumes the whole town is either a sanctuary or a menagerie.

 

“I’m thinking a little history tour when we get into town proper,” McCree says around a bite. “Santa Fe’s old, good for that kind of thing.”

 

Hanzo hums, nabbing the last pastry. “Have I not been with a relic this whole time?”

 

“Hey now.” McCree tips the table just enough to jab into Hanzo’s lunch bloat.

 

The head of the kitchen, one of the omnic triad who owns the farmstead, passes their table to ask about the food then, saving McCree from retribution. Hanzo thanks them for the excellent fare while promising McCree payback with his eyes. McCree just gives him that new smile, eyes hooded and scar curled secretive around his amusement.

 

Eventually Hanzo looks away, the stickiness on his lips pulling his mouth up too.

 

=

 

On the way into Santa Fe they encounter an inconvenience.

 

They both see the plume of dust rising from the straight road ahead. At first they dismiss it as one of the many dirt devils that have tossed up sand every other mile of the drive so far, until Hanzo squints and sees the gleaming metal wall of some sort of car blockade.

 

McCree makes a thoughtful noise. “Deadlock don’t do shakedowns on this road,” he says. “Must be Los Cuervos.”

 

“Athena’s altimetric data showed no trips or fields in this area,” Hanzo replies. “If there are fewer than twenty of them, we can take this checkpoint in ten minutes.”

 

“There’s a fighting spirit,” McCree chuckles. “They ain’t worth the trouble.” He points out a side road which wraps around the shoulder of the nearest butte and out of sight.

 

A few minutes along this backpath leads them past many, many acres of ranchland, a justification for the dismal clothing selection Hanzo had seen back in White Rock. McCree seems a little distracted by the herds of sleek-furred, barrel-bodied elk and cattle on either side of the road. When they pass by the once proud entrance to an abandoned ranch, a longhorned gate with the name sanded away at the end of a long drive, McCree goes silent entirely, and seems to wake from a trance when the road eventually turns paved once again. This time their entrance into Santa Fe is unimpeded.

 

Hanzo had been concerned that their hotwired truck would be somewhat of a sore thumb in the capital, but the city is a surprising blend of antiquity and modernity. There are other wheeled cars here in the crooked streets between adobe buildings, and not one but two carriages harnessed to horses. There is a bustling that he hasn’t experienced since they arrived, but it’s rowdy and cheerful in a way that stokes excitement instead of urgency.

 

Santa Fe has certainly earned its reputation as an art haven. Just on the way to parking they pass geode shops glistening with vivid crystal, barns of arrow-inked pottery and gem-dripped jewelry, dancing kokopelli sculptures, bazaars piled high with beaded baskets, native and omnic galleries of art- and ironwork, and long porticoes shading women selling every kind of silver and turquoise craft. The clash and melt of a hundred different styles, eras, and cultures makes the city both clamorous and harmonic.

 

Once they exit the truck, Hanzo is hit with the other dimensions of the experience: the earthy, smoky smell of roasting chile hanging over the adobe, and the faint, mazy sound of some guitar trilling in the air.

 

“How picturesque,” Hanzo comments. Hanamura, tourist town though it has become, hardly smells like red bean or chimes with folk song in the daytime.

 

“Sometimes,” McCree agrees, snorting. “The fair’ll be here soon, so the town’s on its best behavior.”

 

They meander through the streets as leisurely as the other tourists, splitting their attention between looking for McCree’s recommended tour and marking hostiles. They slip mutually into Joel and Hiro’s linked gait, Hanzo stepping in to allow the arm around his waist. With McCree’s gentlemanly stubble and Hanzo’s hair down, they can see without being seen.

 

As expected, the town is bristling with enemy agents. McCree runs a thumb across the last knob of Hanzo’s spine whenever he spies a Deadlock thug skirting down an alleyway or scoping out a park; Hanzo isn’t sure whether he’s identifying them by memory or by the ritual missing spike on the spurs they all seem to share. The Talon implants are harder to find. Hanzo catches sight of a sniper in the bellhouse of another church, and turns to prop his chin on McCree’s shoulder.

 

“There are as many crosshairs as crosses here,” he informs him.

 

When McCree tilts his head to look at him, it puts their faces close enough for Hanzo to smell the butterscotch on his breath. “God help us,” he says with cheer, pulling Hanzo closer.

 

They pause at a crosswalk. Alert and prickling with hair-raising sensitivity to their immediate surroundings, Hanzo nearly pulls the gun from his hidden rib holster when something darts across the road in front of them. McCree slots their fingers together like he knew the reflex was coming.

 

“Roadrunner,” he says. “Your favorite.”

 

Hanzo’s alarm is replaced with disgust. He takes a second look at the quick thing fleeing the grav pulses levitating the cars and the occasional hooves in the street: a long bird with a train of a tail darting through the perils of the town plaza. It runs into another bird’s haven beneath a stand selling brooms of cinnamon stalks and they begin to tussle.

 

“Ugly chickens,” Hanzo mutters in Japanese. McCree grins in his periphery.

 

After wandering past a store selling New Mexican flags and a traditional tattoo parlor, they encounter a teen selling tickets to a walking tour of Santa Fe. It’s convenient that they are already embraced—not a moment after they pay and fall into the queue of tourists does someone shout “Joel!” above the line and wave an enthusiastic arm. McCree duly walks them over.

 

“I’ll be damned,” a thin, bespectacled man greets them. “The man in the flesh. How the hell are you, Joel?”

 

“Sick now that I seen your ugly mug,” McCree says, slapping the man on the back.

 

“Prodigal bastard! I didn’t believe the Campbells when they told me you were back from whatever corner of God’s green earth. Yet here you are.” The man’s eyes flicker to Hanzo. “Then this must be Hiro.”

 

Hanzo disentangles to accept his handshake. “In the flesh,” he says, dry.

 

The man says something lightning quick in a language that isn’t Spanish to McCree and turns back to Hanzo in the same second. “Pleasure’s all mine. Cathy and Gloria really sung your praises. Can’t imagine how you got saddled with this dog. Call me Baptiste.”

 

The man, clearly aware of the handsome cut of his jaw, smiles at Hanzo. Hanzo starts to roll his eyes before deciding that stepping closer to Joel is better. McCree accommodates him smoothly underneath his arm, the quirk of his split eyebrow convincingly proprietary. The day is getting too hot for such an embrace, but he can see how Baptiste abandons peacocking for something friendlier.

 

“Hiro, this is Emmanuel Baptiste, owner and editor of our state’s own Zine of Enchantment,” McCree tells him, wry enough that Hanzo can infer their long acquaintance. “He and I go back—he published my first piece.”

 

“Ah,” Hanzo says, trying what he learned in Los Alamos. “So you’re the one to blame for this.” He gestures to all of Joel.

 

McCree fakes a pout and Baptiste guffaws. “I take full responsibility for Morricone, yes,” he agrees. Then he mutters something else in that other language that makes McCree snort his breath through his nose, something that Hanzo can’t guess.

 

“Giddy up,” McCree interjects, shoving Baptiste forward after the tourist line that’s already starting moving. He shakes his head and offers his arm to Hanzo, and they follow after.

 

“You have colorful friends,” Hanzo observes, eyes on the tour guide turning the group down a street toward their first landmark.

 

“You’re telling me,” McCree says. In Hanzo’s periphery, he can see him looking back pointedly. Hanzo returns the look with the elbow he couldn’t throw at lunch.

 

“So, Hiro,” Baptiste says when the group stops in front of a historic fountain, bubbling with the slow but clear water that Hanzo has seen in most of the few bodies of water they’ve crossed in the state. “What are you two doing, slumming it here? This can’t be the honeymoon?”

 

“Like I’d waste my honeymoon with you,” McCree scoffs, right as Hanzo replies, “He wishes he were so lucky.”

 

Baptiste pauses, turning toward Hanzo with interest. “Trouble in paradise already?”

 

McCree kicks at Baptiste’s boot to shoo him away. “Finders keepers.”

 

With the same degree of maturity, Baptiste groans, “Can you blame a man?”

 

Hanzo does roll his eyes then, regretting his decision to follow McCree’s impulses already.

 

McCree and Baptiste snipe at each for an entire block, reacquainting with traded barbs and shoulders bumps. Hanzo has never heard McCree so rude nor seen him roughhouse with anyone else before—certainly not as Joel—so he assumes he and this Baptiste are very familiar. He keeps his eyes on the rooftops and alleyways while McCree answers a barrage of taunts about his long absence. None of them pay much attention to the tour guide gesturing toward the repainted adobe building in front of the queue; instead McCree bickers to avoid answering questions about their presence in Santa Fe and Hanzo keeps discreet eyes on their surroundings.

 

By the time the tour group makes it to the avenue along which a line of local women have set up their wares, Hanzo discovers that they have a tail, three people strong. None of them have drawn arms, which makes him think they are only suspicious and not yet intent. He can’t tell their affiliation at first glance through their plainclothes, but he is inclined to think Deadlock by the clever way they wind through sidestreets, keeping pace with the group just out of sight. Given some of the reports he had pulled from the base archives for this job, he doubts the tail will have qualms making a scene in broad daylight to confirm their suspicions.

 

He slips back into the conversation with a hand on McCree’s shoulders. “Are you both quite finished?”

 

McCree explains himself, sheepish, “Sorry. When old dogs get to barking...”

 

Hanzo smiles with both fang and dimple. He can see Baptiste double-take in the corner of his eye. “I have seen enough churches. Why do you not give me your own tour?”

 

“There’s an idea,” McCree winks, reaching down to put his arm around Hanzo’s waist again. He has a smile on his face, but there’s a look in his eyes, a kind of burning that Hanzo hasn’t seen since the last time McCree dropped six men in the span of a heartbeat. His gaze is so concentrated that the dragons flip in Hanzo’s arm. “We’re splitting this joint, Baptiste. But I’m taking you up on that offer.”

 

Hanzo didn’t hear them make a deal, but Baptiste just flicks his hand and makes a whip-crack sound. “You got it. Hiro, forgive this pair of fools. So good to meet you. Joel—” Whatever he says next in their language makes McCree drop his hand farther down Hanzo’s back than he has so far dared. Hanzo suppresses the old impulse to seize him by the wrist and snap.

 

“Dinner’s at six,” Baptiste tells them, saluting. He turns back to the tour guide while Hanzo and McCree detach from the group as they make their way to the next landmark.

 

“Dinner?” Hanzo asks.

 

McCree slides his hand up to somewhere less ambitious. “I got us room and board.” He suddenly turns and leads them down a narrow street lined with food stalls and thronged with people carrying papers and cartons of different New Mexican fare. It reminds Hanzo of the fair in White Rock, with far more attendees. McCree leads them deep within the crush of passersby for cover and guesses, “We’ve been made?”

 

“Probably,” Hanzo replies, voice low. But they had expected that, and were ready for it. “Take us somewhere close.”

 

McCree dutifully leads him into an even tinier alleyway branching off from the outdoor food court, strewn with reeking debris from carts on either side. Hanzo’s nose wrinkles at the smell, but the location is optimal—the dragons are already clawing at the knobs of bone in his left arm, declaring danger and their hunger for it.

 

“There are three,” Hanzo explains, gesturing for McCree to remain at the head of the alley. McCree stays, helpfully grabbing the long tom pots of two giant yucca stalks from a nearby restaurant and arranging them in such a way that the fronds obscure them from outside view. Counting down in his head, Hanzo paces away from the yuccas and pries up a broken plank from a discarded box as he goes to the opposite end of the alley.

 

“From the back?” McCree asks, dragging another yucca over for good measure.

 

“They seem to know the sidestreets,” Hanzo explains, hefting the plank.

 

McCree leans against one of the alley’s adobe wall and folds his arms, languid. “Need any help?”

 

“Unlikely,” Hanzo says. He can hear McCree huff a laugh behind him and immediately resolves to make him regret it. As he nears the corner at the back of the alley where another tiny street turns into theirs, the hairs start to raise on his left arm and the dragons throb painfully.

 

He counts to zero.

 

At that moment the first member of their tail comes around the corner, one hand on the firearm tucked into their belt. Hanzo swings.

 

The clap of wood on skin and skull is no louder than the clamor of activity outside the alley. The man drops without a sound, cracked like an egg. Blood spurts in a long arc across the ground, disappearing into the swill slowly draining out of the alley. The man hadn’t even had time to pull his weapon.

 

The woman and other man of the tail barely avoid Hanzo’s back swing, leaping back to draw their guns. The woman’s mouth opens on a shout, but before she can give them away Hanzo kicks the wind out of her; he’s wearing his battle greaves under his pants today, so she flies into the adobe behind her, cracking too.

 

By pure luck, the last man is silent—Hanzo can see thick ropes of scar tissue like a noose around his neck, probably the result of some botched job before. In the heartbeat before the barrel of the man’s gun swings his way, Hanzo notices that the weapon is electric instead of old-fashioned. That simplifies things.

 

Dropping the plank, he darts between the man’s arms before he can pull the trigger, palming his face with his right hand and covering his weapon with the left. The dragons ripple under his skin the moment he relaxes the dam holding their immense power back; lightning crackles down his arm and through the gun, making it spark in the man’s grip. The smell of hot flesh fills the alley as Hanzo uses his other grip to slam the man into the other adobe wall, letting him drop to the ground with the rest of the tail.

 

He analyzes his handiwork. A quick glance at both men and the woman reveal that they are all Deadlock, as he’d assumed: each one has the small but damning spur. None of them appear to be immediately dead—he’d been careful. Eventually they will either extract themselves from the alley or else reinforcements nearby will notice and do it for them. He and McCree need to move on regardless.

 

“Shall we finish the tour?” he asks over his shoulder, smug. His smirk stalls on his face.

 

McCree is still propped against the wall, but the languidness has left him like water wrung from a rag. There is tension in his deceptive stance like power running through a wire; though he just discharged some of their agitation, the dragons start spiraling in Hanzo’s arm at the sight. McCree looks as he had in the darkness between tents at the small fair in the Jemez, almost ghoulish—somehow he seems taller than normal, looming even as he leans. His eyes are fairly glowing, red like coals behind his bifocals; his attention is a brand on Hanzo’s skin where it roves from his face to his chest to his bare hands and back. On his crooked mouth rests that new smile yet again.

 

“We shall,” McCree says, husky.

 

Hanzo feels the tingle of his sunburn across the tops of his ears again. It takes the tingle spreading across the unburned skin of his face for him to realize what he should have realized a long time ago.

 

McCree presses off of the wall, still thrumming with a peculiar energy, his red eyes dropping down and up Hanzo’s body as he nears. He holds out a gentlemanly arm and, when Hanzo steps up, curls it around his waist, hand smoothing right down to that precariously low grip from before. The dragons tighten into a helix that numbs Hanzo’s entire left arm.

 

“After you,” McCree says, pulling aside the sharded yucca leaves and guiding Hanzo back out onto the crowded street with that bold hand.

 

Hanzo feels the hairs at his nape stand on end and acknowledges that he has missed something excruciatingly obvious. Hiro tucks himself into Joel’s escort and they go leisurely to the next sight.

 

=

 

They arrive at the home of Baptiste a little before six.

 

After ditching their tail, McCree leads Hanzo to an old museum hosting a truly impressive rotation of Georgia O'Keeffe's portfolio, both classic and peripheral. Hanzo has little interest in art but a good deal of experience criticizing it; during the brief and only time he had been seriously courted by a woman aiming to produce main house heirs, he had gone to more galleries and shows than he knew existed in his whole prefecture. Even in a town crawling with hostiles, this viewing is much less objectionable.

 

They manage to wile away the rest of the afternoon trading O’Keeffe trivia, McCree elaborating on the desert panels and Hanzo offering stories about the Hawai’i scenes, and browsing the museum’s shop, where McCree buys a small pewter cast of the iconic cow skull. He puts it on the truck dash when they climb into the vehicle and wind their way away from the plaza, out of trouble and into more residential streets.

 

McCree spends the drive whistling along to the local tunes playing from the radio. Now that Hanzo has noticed what he should have noticed the very first day of their botched mission, the first time he saw the slant of that pug mouth, he is aware of the gravity of his own body, a force that seems to draw McCree’s eyes to him again and again. Hanzo thinks back to McCree's face in the casita, at Bandelier, in White Rock, and derides himself for a fool.

 

During the pubescent year that he had begun to come of age, when he had traded his spindly child limbs for the hereditary Shimada buxomness, his mother had taught him how to feel glances like touch on his skin, not the ninjutsu of his homeschooling but something more prurient. That he hadn’t recognized the pressure of McCree’s attention on his skin before now reveals how long he has been only looking after his own hide, not exploiting it.

 

“Are we not putting your friend at risk?” Hanzo asks, following McCree’s occasional directions.

 

McCree shrugs. “We ain’t been followed. And Baptiste can take care of his own.”

 

Hanzo turns down the long driveway that McCree indicates and supposes that must be true. Publishing, apparently, has afforded Baptiste a very comfortable cottage in the scrubby hills above the town proper: a shy ranch of peach pink adobe hiding behind a tall stone gate and courtyard. The round wooden door in the gate opens only a moment after they park; their host appears in the gap and leans against the jamb.

 

Baptiste takes one look at their stolen truck and shudders. “If I’d known you were driving around in that death trap—! Joel, for the love of what’s holy, take one of my cars.”

 

“You’re not as cute as you think,” McCree says, curling around Hiro.

 

Hanzo holds back a glare at both of them and gives Baptiste a nod instead. “Thank you for hosting us.”

 

“Ready to eat? Right this way,” Baptiste replies, leading them through the gate. The courtyard inside is a masterful lacing of stone steps and desert flowers, all blushing the same sunny shades as the house itself. They follow the path leading up to the front door, which is open and spilling light from the house out into the fast approaching dusk.

 

“A Morricone sighting! In these parts?” comes a voice from within the house. A moment later a woman in an apron steps onto the porch. Baptiste’s wife, perhaps, judging by her ring. She sounds exactly the same as her husband as she says, “I’ll be damned.”

 

“Lupe.” McCree perks up. He separates from Hanzo’s side to press kisses to the woman’s cheeks and let her kiss his stubble in return. “Ain’t you a sight for sore eyes.”

 

Lupe turns to Hanzo and reels him in without hesitation. “Hiro!” she exclaims, greeting him like an old friend. “How sweet to meet you! You’re as stunning as they say. Isn’t Joel a lucky duck? Manny told me you were a looker and he wasn’t lying. Goodie for me. I’m Lupe, by the by.”

 

Hanzo is beginning to see a common thread among Joel’s acquaintances. He flashes a dimple and says lowly, “You are too kind.”

 

Lupe gasps. Fanning herself, she leads him through the front door, McCree and Baptiste already arguing at their heels.

 

The four of them arrive in the dining room after a quick tour of the house. It differs from the casita only in size—enough bedrooms for an inn, a den and a study _and_ an office, as well as a studio and sunroom—but has all the same spirit: chile ristras, red and green decor, flowering cacti in corners and on sills. Hanzo is immediately and inexplicably comfortable, though he keeps aware of the house’s doors and windows.

 

Dinner is smothered, savory sopapillas stuffed with beans, beef, and calabacitas, as delicious as every other meal he’s had since they arrived in the state. Between bites, Lupe alternates between interrogating Joel in much the same way her husband had and flirting with Hiro in much the same way her husband had. Occasionally the couple joins forces, bickering and cajoling charmingly. They are as outrageous as the Campbells and even more audacious; Hanzo surprises himself by chuckling at their antics more than once.

 

Dessert is lavender and piñon ice cream; he has seconds and thirds, bristling at McCree’s snickers across the table. He looks up from his bowl to glare once, and finds McCree’s eyes on his sticky mouth, his smile strained. It’s what he deserves, Hanzo decides, rubbing away the lingering sting of the last of his sunburn.

 

“Get this,” Baptiste addresses his wife after the meal in their lounge, a tumbler of sotol in hand. “I ran into our guests on one of my tours—the one the city commissioned. Is Joel a scrub or what?”

 

“You organized that?” McCree scoffs. “Explains a lot.”

 

“He didn’t even have the decency to stop by the office,” Baptiste continues without pausing. “He would’ve breezed into and out of town without so much as a howdy.”

 

“Trying to keep Hiro to himself,” Lupe tsks, sitting down next to her husband with her own drink and tossing her feet across his lap.

 

Across from them, Hiro sits with his arm across the back of Joel’s seat. McCree scowls, tosses his arm over Hanzo’s, and pulls him closer until they’re touching from shoulder to hip on their chaise. “Can you blame a man?” he shoots Baptiste’s words back at him.

 

Hanzo isn’t interested in another pissing contest, so he ends it like he ended the last one: he smiles up at McCree and says, “I enjoyed Joel’s tour.”

 

The Baptistes look keen at the second flash of his dimples and fangs, but Hanzo’s attention is on the sudden red flare in McCree’s eye, a quick flash of the fire he had seen in that alley earlier. That peculiar energy returns too, arcing through the arm around Hanzo’s back and sparking on his skin. The dragons swell so quickly that Hanzo has to bite his tongue to keep their power from discharging into every nearby circuit.

 

“Thank you kindly,” McCree says lowly.

 

Baptiste and his wife disarm the moment with more harmless ribbing, eventually drawing McCree’s burning eye away. The dragons remain restless long after it’s gone.

 

Joel and Hiro chat with the Baptistes until their after-dinner drinks are done; then they excuse themselves, citing an early morning. McCree and Hanzo can’t linger; they may have found a burrow for the night, but they won’t last another day in Santa Fe. The bodies of their tail were surely found hours ago; if they don’t keep ahead of the headhunters, they won’t make it to their extraction.

 

The Baptistes only offer one more unsubtle invitation for Hiro to follow them down their own hallway before they show them to the guest room: a cozy corner room with a fireplace and a big bed whose wooden frame may have once been the posts on some ranch. There are sprigs of lavender and pecan bouquets in the corners, filling the space with an erotic aroma, probably deliberate.

 

“We truly appreciate your hospitality,” Hanzo repeats at the threshold.

 

“Our pleasure,” Baptiste leers. Lupe adds, “For you, the offer is standing—”

 

“Good _night_ ,” McCree says, pulling Hanzo into the bedroom and shutting the door on the Baptistes. He makes a rude gesture through the wood as the Baptistes audibly retreat and turns to Hanzo with a look of long-suffering.

 

“Ready for bed?” Hanzo asks, not bothering to conceal his schadenfreude. McCree turns the rude gesture on him.

 

They spend the next hour preparing for morning and reviewing their escape route twice and then thrice. McCree burns piñon incense in the fireplace and sprawls in the armchair facing the hearth with his tablet. Hanzo rifles through the bags they brought in and triple checks all the weapons on their persons, excepting what they left in the truck. They work in silence, a welcome reprieve after the long, noisy evening, and Hanzo’s gaze flits between the smooth metal in his hands and the broad plain of McCree’s back.

 

McCree must feel the attention. “It’ll be quieter down south. Joel don’t have quite the same presence there.”

 

“No more propositions for Hiro?” Hanzo asks. “A shame.”

 

McCree snorts. “He’ll live.”

 

When they’re satisfied with the security of their getaway, they wash up properly. McCree stands from the armchair with a series of cracks and strips out of Joel’s slacks and henley right there in the room. Hanzo has seen it all before, but for the first time, driven by the day’s realization, he deliberately looks.

 

At first glance he just notices the scars and pockmarks of a fellow former gang member and wanted man, before he sees what Hiro might: a thick chest, arms almost as sculpted as his own, thighs that could and probably have killed. The pug mouth, lips full and brown.

 

Hanzo takes his few toiletries to the bathroom and considers himself in the mirror. It seems exile has dulled some of the faculties he used to keep sharp for the clan. He hasn’t leaned into this sort of awareness since the last time it had been useful—by his count, four years ago when he was slinking through a club in Numbani on the hunt for a mark. Though he’s out of practice, it’s not difficult to pursue the awareness to its origin and return it, to think of McCree’s wide, competent hands in that way.

 

After his ablutions, Hanzo steps back into the bedroom with intent. McCree is back in the armchair in his sleep clothes, this time popping butterscotch and fiddling with a crinkly pile of glossy yellow wrappers; like a lodestone to ore, his eyes follow Hanzo as he crosses to his bag. Hanzo throws his things down and then tests that gaze by pulling his shirt off as well.

 

Immediately the energy from before starts humming in the room, raising the hairs on Hanzo’s nape. He kicks off his pants and the humming peaks, making the dragons sink claws into the ligaments of his arm.

 

He turns and looks directly into McCree’s red eye, waiting with his thumbs tucked into the waistband of his briefs. With the tension darting around the room like a loop of electricity, he almost expects McCree to open his mouth and articulate the thing charging the air between them.

 

But McCree says nothing. He meets Hanzo’s stare easily; he makes no effort to be coy about the way he glances back and forth between Hanzo’s face and the hair tracking toward his underwear. His expression is as indolent as Reylito’s, as loose as it’s been every time they've stripped side by side in the communal showers; the only difference now is the burning of his gaze where it settles like a hot hand on Hanzo’s skin.

 

Hanzo gives him another few heartbeats to act, to turn his new smile into a new offer, but McCree just pops another butterscotch and rubs at Peacekeeper sprawled across his lap.

 

Shrugging, Hanzo drops his briefs and pulls on the pants he’s been using for bed over his braces, before turning down the sheets and climbing on the mattress. What McCree does or doesn’t choose to address is hardly his concern.

 

“Try to sleep,” he orders, raking his hair into a bun for sleep and laying back against the pillows. “I will leave without you if you are not fit for departure tomorrow.”

 

“Roger that,” McCree laughs, settling deeper into the chair, sounding inordinately pleased. He leans back to hit the light on the wall and drop the room into nighttime desert darkness, leaving himself a little circle of orange candlelight from the long line of candles melted onto the mantle above the fireplace.

 

Hanzo watches him raise his tablet, reaching for another butterscotch, before tugging the sheets overhead.

 

Against his expectation, he falls asleep without effort.

 

He rarely dreams, but that night the dragons infiltrate his sleep the way they used to after he first earned them, when his arm was still scabbing and flaking with their likenesses. He can hear them spiraling together in the sky of his subconscious, pealing like thunder as they roar to one another. Through the center of their ouroboros, like a sun hanging at permanent noon, he sees the burn of McCree’s eye through his closed lids all night.

**Author's Note:**

> I also exist at [t-pock.tumblr.com](http://t-pock.tumblr.com).


End file.
